Mostly I don't like Jonah Goldberg's commentary as he's a never-Trumper, while I am not. He paradoxically has a good insight into Donald Trump's appeal to voters.
Trump is an entertainer-celebrity more than a conventional politician. As a result, he gets away with things no conventional politician could get away with. He may invite passionate opposition from his foes, but his fans simply shrug at his misstatements, malapropisms and mendacity. Those of us who predicted in 2016 that the "laws of political gravity" would catch up with Trump were proven wrong because Trump is subject to the laws of celebrity gravity - a very different jurisdiction.
This strikes me a reasonable explanation for the Trump phenomenon - he is judged by a different metric. It's why we take him seriously but not literally.
I bet President Reagan had some of this "celebrity" slack working for him, too.
