I don’t know if it’s all constant gas-lighting by the right-wing media. Some is auto-gas-lighting, or in other words, misinterpreting the world around them.
A good example would be my mother. Although I’m not sure if she’s a Trump supporter or not, she’s definitely in her own alternate reality. One where “in Houston, people get shot all the time.” without realizing that most of those people are drug dealers in poorer parts of town, and that white, suburban elderly women are amazingly unlikely to be shot and killed, or even accosted in her part of town. And this sort of thinking extends to other stuff- there’s a lot of fear, distrust and general unease among the older crowd that I don’t recall having been there in my grandparents’ day.
Maybe that’s something whose fermentation the right-wing is encouraging, but it’s not like she watches Fox News all day and listens to right-wing talk radio, etc… it’s just that she’s a lot more fearful than she has any reason to be.
That said, I think that there’s a lot of merit to the idea that a lot of Trump supporters have doubled down on him out of fear of being proven wrong in public. As if somehow admitting they made a good-faith mistake is a loss of face, public admission of guilt, or exposure of weakness.
I also think there’s a big contingent of people who have been gas-lighted by the Republican narrative into believing that the Democratic party stands for a lot of things- I read a letter to the editor in this morning’s local paper where a person, presumably a Trumper, was bloviating about how if you’re going to come here and break the laws (immigration laws), you should be prepared to suffer the consequences. And this person was contending that family separations and all that were the fault of the parents for illegally immigrating here.
I can only suppose that this person is so hung up on the notion of law and order, and punishing those who transgress at any cost, up to and including splitting toddlers from parents, that they are willing to ignore the fact that it’s a pretty minor crime- a misdemeanor, and that in the grand scheme of things, nobody is suggesting that these people be let off the hook, just that families be kept together.
But it’s a testament to the propaganda that these people perceive the Democratic response to this to be one of condoning law-breaking, or putting “touchy-feely” stuff ahead of enforcing the laws, etc… There’s no proportionality there; it’s always “with us or against us”, with respect to law, law enforcement, etc… So if Trump comes in with a big law and order push, this crowd is going to be all behind that, and is likely to ignore the other stuff if this gets done, despite Trump’s own transgressions.