The extreme red and blue poltical divide didn’t come about by accident. The GOP desperate for voters and Fox News seeing a great opportunity to cash in on hate worked hard over a decade and more to gather up, inflame and push the nation’s xenophobes, malcontents and new poor into a single block of political blowback against the nation’s better angels.

This was a group tailor made for a con like Donald Trump, and though the GOP and Fox instigators of what quickly became the MAGA hats — once Trump saw his political opening — were caught off guard by the Donald’s usurping of their handiwork, they soon understood that their creation was in fact Trump’s natural people, causing them to knukle under to Donny Boy’s whims with forced gusto.