It was telling that, in urging him to fall on his sword, the New York Post felt compelled to appeal to his sense of self-preservation: if the Democrats take the Senate on January 5, the board asked, ‘on a personal note, do you think they won’t spend the next four years torturing you with baseless hearings and investigations?’

So it is with a lot of Trump-sympathetic media in recent weeks. The authors or anchors are addressing an audience of one — they are appealing Trump’s vanities and his fears in order to make him reconsider his defiance. If you want to win again, best to retreat now and return with fire and fury later. Preserve your amazing legacy, Mr President. Give it up, Sir, or the Democrats will seize your assets. This is not the talk of a political movement, but a one-man information system or worse — what those deranged NeverTrumpers said all along — a personality cult.

But we all know Trump won’t go quietly; he will take an ever-dwindling number of believers, cranks and charlatans out with him to the political wilderness of Mar-a-Lago. The right will have to move on to the next great racket.