What keeps coming back to me is what Trump's biographer, Michael D'Antonio, said about Trump's machinations even before he stood for office.
That after you've been in Trump's orbit for a while, you're contaminated. There are little things that you've let go unchallenged, because amid so much outrageousness you have to pick your battles, and then Trump turns round and claims you agreed with him about those little things. So if he's guilty, you must be too.
And he uses it to draw people further and further in. Very much fingers-caught-in-the-machine stuff.
D'Antonio also talks about Trump family members who sound like classic enablers of an abuser - hardly surprising when they were children growing up with one. They constantly justify, normalise and try to explain away his actions, and his beliefs and delusions become their truth which they propagate uncritically.