Despite his extremely low-energy campaign, Donald Trump remains by far the most popular candidate for president among Republican voters. He was more than 15 points ahead of the runner-up, Florida governor Ron DeSantis, in the most recent Morning Consult poll. As Jacobin’s Luke Savage notes, not only is Trump popular with Republican voters but he has effectively reshaped the party, making “his own priorities, reflexes, and affectations the lingua franca of the Republican base.”

Chasing Trump’s audience, conservative outlets like Fox News and figures from Steve Bannon to low-level internet personalities have amplified his message and tone and pushed them further, creating a self-sustaining cycle where the base expects continually crueler and more aggressive validation of these “priorities, reflexes, and affectations” from its elected officials and media. Years after he lost to Joe Biden, it’s still true that almost anything an American conservative does these days is, explicitly or implicitly, a reaction to Donald Trump.

That’s as true for Charles Koch as it is for anyone else. The billionaire heir, along with his late brother David, formed a vast fundraising network to influence Republican primary and general elections as well as conservative policy. Before Trump came along, the two Kochs were at the top of most people’s lists of the most influential members of the Republican Party. And, of course, even when Trump was in office, Koch organizations didn’t stop. In 2020 alone, the array of interlocking entities affiliated with Koch and backed by other wealthy conservatives spent a half billion dollars on Republican candidates and right-wing policy initiatives, according to the New York Times.