Oh, no, Frasier. Why does Trump appeal to people like Kelsey Grammer?

Even with that boost to Haley’s campaign, the likelihood of either her or DeSantis overturning Trump’s lead is slim. But if Haley were to triumph - it’s a very big if - she is far from the answer to America’s ails, being almost as divisive and right-wing as her predecessor.

What astonishes political veterans is that Trump remains in pole position. After his inflammatory term in office, and following three years barking in the wilderness - including January 6, 2021, when he encouraged his followers to converge on Capitol Hill, insisting he had won the election despite all evidence to the contrary - you might have expected even his most ardent supporters to have melted away.

Read more by Rosemary Goring: Once respected, now reviled: who would be a teacher nowadays?

No chance. It’s true that some have had a Damascene conversion, but many are as staunchly behind him as ever. Among these must be counted the otherwise sane and intelligent Kelsey Grammer, aka Frasier. In an interview on the Today programme earlier this week, Justin Webb raised Grammer’s endorsement of Trump at the last election. Was he still a supporter? “I am and I’ll let that be the end of it,” Grammer replied, at which point the interview came to an abrupt halt. It later transpired that the PR team at Paramount+ had prevented the actor airing his views on this subject while promoting the newly-rebooted Frasier, even though, says Webb, he would quite happily have discussed it.

Here in the UK it is hard to comprehend how someone like Grammer, whose show is a definition of urbane humour, could continue to give Trump his vote. Or how countless others like him - people you might otherwise expect to have much in common with - can be so politically (from our perspective) misguided. What is it about Trump that holds them in thrall?

Kelsey Grammer is still a Trump supporter (Image: Getty)

Part of the answer lies not in Trump but in those on the other side of the ticket. It is widely agreed that Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign nose-dived after she categorised Trump supporters as “a basket of deplorables”, with “racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic” views. By essentially calling half of the American populace stupid and ignorant, she confirmed every suspicion that Washington was an ivory tower: supercilious, aloof and out of touch. This very effectively bolstered Trump’s unlikely image as a man of the people.

In On the Road: American Adventures from Nixon to Trump, James Naughtie recalls a Trump rally in 2016. At short notice, a crowd of 10,000 had turned out in North Carolina: “They were a cross-section of the local community, ordinary people with kids perched on their shoulders eating ice creams. There were a few hairy bikers who seemed to be from the Steve Bannon part of Trumpland - some white nationalist stickers were on their machines - but in the main this was middle America at play, not even particularly concerned about chanting ‘Lock her up!’ too often. They were normality on display.”

Normality on display: the confounding factor in the Trump phenomenon. The legion of voters who put him into the White House the first time, and could well do so a second, do not have horns or forked tails, but are everyday folk. Admittedly, two years into Trump’s presidency, Kelsey Grammer described him as a “brat”, yet he also said that he did not “have a lot of problems with what he’s doing” in terms of policies. So even when people are clear-sighted about the character of the man, his message, and the way he governs, remain alluring.

Grammer’s loyalty to Trump is just one indicator that his constituency is many and varied. It cannot be categorised as mainly white, older, working-class and angry, the shorthand profile commonly applied to his voters. The Donald’s base is far wider than that - how else to explain his roaring and enduring success?

It includes the disenfranchised: those who feel that Washington is not working for them. It includes the deluded, who have swallowed the right-wing media’s claims that all allegations and charges against Trump are nothing more than fake news. Hence the response of his devotees when faced with awkward truths: “That’s your fact, not my fact.”

It includes those getting rich from oil, gas and coal, who refuse to accept climate change and their part in it. It includes Christian fundamentalists, who are virulently anti-abortion and abhor what they perceive as the liberal left’s permissiveness and immorality. It includes the gun lobby, which refuses to discuss modifying the law to protect lives, clinging instead to the barnacled idea that defending yourself with gunfire is an inalienable American right.

And, of course, it includes right-wing bampots and conspiracy theorists, among them QAnon and their kind, who want to see the end of democracy. Aspiring to autocracy and dictatorship, they see in Trump their best hope of a leader in the mould of Putin.

Read more by Rosemary Goring: Every Bleat of her heart: Some sheep are kinder than other sheep

Almost all of the above believe that Trump, by not being part of the Washington elite, and by claiming to be anti-establishment, is one of them. That he has their best interests at heart.

Meanwhile, onlookers from outside the USA watch with horror at what looks like a pernicious cult, dismayed at the paucity of credible opponents. How can such a wealthy and intelligent nation be in a position that, come 2024, the prime candidates to lead the world’s greatest power through this particularly dreadful time are so aged and frail that one totters across a stage and the other is showing increasing signs of confusion? What possible conclusion can we come to? Only that the much-vaunted American Dream has turned to abject despair.