But this represents millions of our fellow Americans: Philip Bump discusses how COVID lies ended up helping Trump and how it’s affecting the way Republicans see the health institutions today: After insisting with crossed fingers that the coronavirus wouldn’t pose a significant risk to the United States, Trump in early 2020 endorsed broad restrictions aimed at limiting the spread of the virus. The economy stumbled. His reelection bid looming, Trump reverted to trying to wish the whole thing away. He turned government officials such as Anthony S. Fauci into scapegoats, casting them as hyperventilating scolds. The politics of Trump’s base are heavily predicated on rejecting authority, so the play worked like a charm. In fact, it outran Trump, whose support for the rapid development of vaccines targeting the virus became something of an albatross among Republicans who viewed the inoculations as left-wing nonsense. On the right, the surreal narrative about the pandemic triumphed over reality — just as would the anti-establishment, conspiratorial narratives about the legitimacy of Trump’s reelection loss and the violence of his supporters at the Capitol.[…] In retrospect, the right’s repercussion-free rejection of reality was likely one of the engines of the Democrats’ own grim fantasy. There was no obvious political price incurred among those who railed against mask-wearing or vaccination efforts. Perhaps, then, the political price would be an electoral one, a literal Darwinism that manifested on Election Day. It didn’t. More than 1 million Americans died during the pandemic that began on Trump’s watch —…