Trump test-drove this defense during the Senate trial for his impeachment, which ended with a majority of senators, but not the two-thirds required for conviction, concluding he was guilty. “History will record this shameful effort as a deliberate attempt by the Democrat Party to smear, censor, and cancel not just President Trump, but the 75 million Americans who voted for him,” his attorney Michael van der Veen told senators. This makes little sense: Just because many Americans voted for Trump doesn’t mean he was incapable of fomenting an insurrection and otherwise trying to overturn the election, though it is literally true that Democrats hoped to legally disqualify him from ever running for office again. The charge makes sense only if you believe that Trump voters were the majority, which is false.

The argument makes even less sense in the context of the Vance investigation. The impeachment, at least, had to do with the election. Vance is examining whether Trump committed personal financial crimes before or during his presidency, which has nothing to do with his work in office.

But Trump has sought to create a connection between himself and his base that resembles more closely the intense identification between a political faction and a leader of, say, Argentinian Peronism than anything in American political history. In the winter of 2019, Trump tweeted a meme that featured himself with the caption “In reality they’re not after me. They’re after you. I’m just in the way.” Trump has sought to portray his own interest and his supporters’ as so tightly intertwined that even an inquiry into his personal foibles is somehow a threat to them.