President Donald Trump walked out of the Oval office Monday afternoon to the sound of dozens of camera shutters clicking. He stuck out his hand, apparently felt that it was raining slightly and walked back inside.

He left the door to the Oval Office open, and a few of the 150 or so reporters, photographers and technicians gathered behind the rope line on the South Lawn waved at Jared Kushner, Mick Mulvaney, Hogan Gidley, Kellyanne Conway and other administration officials who stood staring at us from the open doorway. Then an armed Secret Service agent walked over and closed the door.

An aide entered the Oval Office with an umbrella and moments after that Trump re-emerged, umbrella in hand, and walked to Marine One, the presidential helicopter. In the past he has used that time to take questions from the press. He stopped doing so during his impeachment, but after last week’s acquittal he took several questions on Friday, including one in which I asked about him working with the Democrats—which he turned into a rant against House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, claiming she illegally ripped up his State of the Union speech.

On Monday, Trump wasn’t in a speaking mood. He stopped and waved at us, but as I beckoned him to approach and take questions, he walked off.

So I asked, in my best Sam Donaldson megaphone voice, “What do you say to your GOP critics who say you’re the leader of a cult?”

I got a sneer, and for a moment I thought he was going to flip me off, but I did not get an answer.

Truth is many presidents have been accused of amassing a cult-like following—Nixon, Reagan, Clinton and Obama come to mind—but Trump is the first to be accused by members of his own party of destroying that party and replacing it with a personality cult. The existence of such a cult has been discussed in D.C. since Trump took office and began weeding out traditional Republicans from his inner circle. They’ve been replaced, if they are replaced at all, by sycophants who would never tell the emperor he has no clothes.

The results were on vulgar display last Thursday, when Trump took a victory lap in the East Room after his impeachment acquittal. (Check out the full transcript here.)

Barking like seals, the 200 or so souls who assembled there laughed at every Trump joke, whether he was telling representative Steve Scalise he was better looking after getting shot or telling Jim Jordan he had a great body. When Trump said Scalise’s wife must really love him because she visited him in the hospital and “a lot of wives wouldn’t give a damn,” it was greeted with laughter and cheers. Those who winced at the misogynistic comment were reporters.

The crowd gave a standing ovation to the defense team that twisted the idea of a “fair trial” into a trial with no witnesses, and they cackled as Trump took aim at Pelosi, Senator Chuck Schumer, Rep. Jerry Nadler and the rest of the Democrats the president and his cohorts call “the enemy.”

Some in the media said they were shocked by Trump’s speech, which more resembled a Friar’s Club roast than a presidential address. I can’t remember the last time I heard a president use the term “bullshit” in the East Room. But for those of us who’ve spent time covering this president there were no shocks. It was genuine and vintage Trump. No more. No less.

The people in the room included those who have tried to destroy public education; sided with anti-vaxxers, racists and the one percent; denied climate change; quoted QAnon theories; questioned the Holocaust; championed the withholding of medical coverage to the masses; and supported “Deep State” conspiracy theories. I saw one person I know who has said the moon landings were faked, and I’m pretty sure at least one of the assembled fans believes in a flat earth.

This is the presidential cult. It is a loose amalgamation of loons, poltroons and egomaniacs who’ve never felt the glow of power like they do now. Each of them sat with a grin plastered on their face waiting to be mentioned, praised and roasted by Donald Trump. This was their moment.

But the strangest thing was watching Mitch McConnell. The Kentucky senior senator flashed a rare grin and looked like a preschooler thankful to be honored by the teacher on whom he secretly harbors a crush. I’ve known McConnell since 1978 and have never seen the look on his face I saw in the East Room last week. His thin little grin caused a mild case of nausea.

The whole group is reminiscent of kids who relished pulling wings off of flies and making fun of anyone who isn’t them. They are living a life of revenge for slights against them, real and mostly imagined. They smell of insecurity, hubris and denial along with greed and malice.

Watching the GOP senators leer over the willing surrender of their Constitutional duties of government oversight, thereby relinquishing their role as an equal branch of government, made cogent individuals quote Trump’s words: “Bullshit.”

Trump empowers them. Trump makes fun of them and—as Trump pointed out when he said of Missouri Senator Josh Hawley, “Man, did I make a good choice”—Trump owns them.

There it was, laid bare. That’s the cult, and they bowed down again Friday night when Trump recalled Ambassador Gordon Sondland and fired NSC Director for European Affairs Alexander Vindman—and his brother—and had them escorted off of the White House campus.

Revenge is Donald Trump’s raison d’être. It consumes him and threatens to consume us all.

There’s always, as my father used to say, a reason for hope, but those who look to the Democrats for it may be sorely disappointed.

James Carville, the architect of Bill Clinton’s successful run for the White House, remains terrified of what he sees among the Democrats. Factoring in the Iowa caucuses fiasco, recent pronouncements by the Democratic candidates, Trump’s State of the Union address and his acquittal in the Senate, Carville told Vox, “It’s like we’re losing our damn minds.”

Friday’s debate in New Hampshire, where candidates discussed reparations, made condescending comments about part of the electorate and continued to burrow into the weeds on healthcare, certainly seemed arcane in the context of the Donald Trump cult. The emergence of Mayor Pete Buttigieg and Senator Bernie Sanders as Democratic frontrunners following the Iowa caucuses and the New Hampshire primary has already caused another knee-jerk reaction.

Trump, appealing to the cult, has tweeted out his denigration of the pair. “Bootedgeedge (Buttigieg) is doing pretty well tonight. Giving Crazy Bernie a run for his money. Very interesting!”

Former conservative congressman and talk-radio host Joe Walsh ended his bid for the Republican nomination last week. “I’m suspending my campaign,” he tweeted, “but our fight against the Cult of Trump is just getting started.” (Walsh has a long history of incendiary and controversial statements ranging from racist slurs on Twitter to promoting falsehoods around former President Barack Obama’s birth certificate and religion. He has apologized for saying Obama was a Muslim.) On CNN’s New Day he said, “I got into this because I thought it was really important that there was a Republican—a Republican—out there every day calling out this president for how unfit he is.” Trump, Walsh added, is the greatest threat to this country. “Any Democrat would be better than Trump.”

Walsh joins George Conway, Anthony Scaramucci, Mitt Romney, Jeff Flake and other Republicans fighting an uphill battle against Trump, who enjoys, according to his tweets, a 95 percent approval rating among Republicans.

That popularity, combined with his impeachment acquittal, has given Trump more than enough fuel to stoke his fires as he continues to tear down Constitutional norms and impose his dictatorship on the banana republic that was once the United States.

Tuesday, after Justice Department attorneys recommended a seven- to nine-year sentence for convicted felon and Trump friend Roger Stone, the president tweeted that the sentence was too harsh. The four prosecutors quit the case after Trump’s new Roy Cohn, Attorney General William Barr, decided the recommendation would be reviewed.

While Judge Amy Berman Jackson retains the right to sentence Stone, Trump’s actions show he cares little about the rule of law.

His cult, cheering in his defense, will travel with him wherever he goes.