When the former president endorses violence and proposes using the government to attack his enemies, many of his supporters assume it's just an act.

The former president has talked about weaponizing the Justice Department and jailing political opponents. He has said he would purge the government of non-loyalists and that he would have trouble hiring anyone who admits that the 2020 election wasn't stolen. He proposed "one really violent day" in which police officers could get "extraordinarily rough" with impunity. He has promised mass deportations and predicted it would be "a bloody story."

Last Thursday, inside a small music venue in downtown Detroit during the middle of the day, you could see this phenomenon playing out quite clearly. Mr. Trump was there to address the Detroit Economic Club. Presidents Richard Nixon, Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama had all, in their respective days, come to Michigan to talk to this club, too.

Mary Burney, a 49-year-old woman from Grosse Pointe, Mich., who works in sales for a radio station, described herself as an independent-turned-Trump-voter. She did not believe the former president would really persecute his political opponents, even though he has mused about appointing a special prosecutor to "go after" President Biden and members of his family. "I don't think that's on his list of things to do," she said. "No, no."

Tom Pierce, a 67-year-old from Northville, Mich., did not truly believe that Mr. Trump would round up enough immigrants to carry out "the largest mass deportation operation in history." Even though that is pretty much the central promise of his campaign. "He may say things, and then it gets people all upset," said Mr. Pierce, "but then he turns around and he says, No, I'm not doing that.' It's a negotiation. But people don't understand that."

Did Mr. Pierce, a former chief financial officer, believe Mr. Trump would actually levy a 200 percent tariff against certain companies? "No," he said. "That's the other thing. You've got to sometimes scare these other countries." (Indeed. In an interview on Fox News on Sunday, Mr. Trump said, "I'm using that just as a figure. I'll say 100, 200, I'll say 500, I don't care.")

Mr. Pierce added, "He's not perfect. And I don't necessarily care for his personality, but I do like how we had peace and prosperity."

That dynamic is one that Mr. Trump has had with voters ever since he stormed onto the political scene nine years ago, and it endures, even as his language has grown darker. In the latest New York Times/Siena College poll, 41 percent of likely voters agreed with the assessment that "people who are offended by Donald Trump take his words too seriously."

I guess this is precisely how Germany fell into the thrall of another deranged conman nearly a century ago. The parallels fit like a comfortable pair of fur-lined gloves.