Richard Warnica: I watched Donald Trump's supporters walk out on him. I couldn't have been more wrong about the reasons why

Contributing sentiments towards policy:

55% : I've been covering Trump for almost nine years.
54% : Trump was on television almost every week standing in front of civil and criminal courts.
52% : By 8 p.m., when Trump was still only about halfway through his speech, there were lineups at the elevators to the ground floor.
50% : But when I saw the audience streaming out during the second hour of Trump's speech Sunday -- the same audience that had, in many cases, lined up for four or more hours that morning, and cheered through five more hours of racist, often bizarre warmups before Trump appeared -- it finally struck me: At some point, somewhere between Iowa and here, the myth of Donald Trump had begun to separate from the man.
50% : In all his years in the spotlight, Trump has rarely if ever allowed himself to be out-outraged on stage.
48% : Trump has long been something of a religious figure to his most devoted acolytes.
46% : He was hit with judgements and rulings that seemed logical and proportional to the parts of the population that read court reporting in the New York Times and like outrageous overreach to many that don't.To Republicans hesitant about another round of Trump and loyalists growing tired of the schtick, the trials -- which were legitimate, necessary and fair -- came off like persecution.
36% : They were there to see a messiah -- and that's one thing Trump, in the flesh, can never fully be.
34% : There remains zero evidence that the man who shot Trump was a Democrat (he was actually a registered Republican) or even particularly political.
34% : "It's no wonder Trump the man can't live up to that.
32% : The optimistic read on this would be that whatever dark political magic Trump has is waning now, that what we're seeing is the last gasp of a historical blip.
31% : If you tune out the racist jokes what the audience heard for more than five hours before Trump appeared Saturday was the myth of a Christ-like figure, besieged by unbelievers but never beaten.
30% : He has always been a fabulist, Trump, a salesman and a confidence artist with an unusual talent for shameless reinvention.
30% : They fed the narrative that Democrats would do anything to take Trump down.
30% : "Trump was fund-raising off his conviction with small-dollar donors as well," Glasser wrote; "his campaign, which portrayed him as the victim of a politicized justice system, brought in nearly $53 million in the twenty-four hours after the verdict."And then came the shooting.
25% : It's not going to go away if Trump loses or dies or goes to jail, or even if he just goes back to golfing and committing quiet frauds.
14% : What Tucker Carlson was trying to say, with his scrambled aside about "Samoan-Malaysian, low IQ former prosecutors," is that there is no legitimate way Harris can win -- that if she declares victory, it will be an out and out fraud, just the latest attempt by Democrats to bring Trump low through dirty means.

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