Donald Trump's legal team has reacted to the election-interference indictment of the former president with a rather novel legal strategy. They're essentially claiming that Trump never believed he lost the 2020 election -- and if you listen to what he has to say about it even now, he still believes he somehow won. This is, not to put too fine a point on it, delusional.

Donald Trump did not win the 2020 election. That is a fact. His losses in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Georgia, Wisconsin, and Arizona sealed his fate. It wasn't even particularly close in the Electoral College -- Joe Biden won 306 votes to Trump's 232. Trump would have had to shift 38 of those votes to his column to have won, which would have meant shifting a minimum of three of those battleground states. And there was no evidence in any of them of any sort of fraud or any other inaccuracies that would have led to flipping the state. Not one. Ipso facto, Trump lost.

The election interference case against Trump will attempt to prove that Trump both knew this and even admitted it to others on occasion. So Team Trump will attempt to prove that Trump never admitted the truth and to this day still does not believe it. Their legal argument is that Trump is deluded and nothing can change his delusion in any way -- no matter how many people tell him he is wrong and that he lost, he will never believe it.

Let's all just pause for a moment and step back and take a look at the bigger picture. The Republican Party has a frontrunner for their presidential nomination who is clearly delusional. Openly. He does not believe reality. He insists that his fantasy version of events is the truth, even though he has zero evidence to back it up. He does have lots of conspiracy theories (all of which have been disproven multiple times) and lots of delusional paranoia about all the nefarious plots which somehow "stole" the election away from him. None of which are true, and none of which has any actual solid evidence to back it up. Trump takes it all on faith. And he forces others to swear fealty to his delusion as well. So it is not just Donald Trump who is delusional, it is most of the Republican Party at this point. There are still a handful who deny Trump and admit the truth, but they are a vanishing minority within the ranks of GOP politicians. And the vast majority of the Republican electorate buys into Trump's delusion and completely denies the reality that he lost in 2020.

That is all an extraordinary place for the country to be in. The Republican Party wants to run a man for the highest office in the land who is completely delusional. A man who refuses to accept reality. That's who they want to put in charge of the nuclear launch codes. This is not just one man's delusion, it is in fact a form of mass hysteria. A large group of Americans (Trump supporters) believe something which is not true, and since they believe it as a matter of faith, they cannot be convinced of the truth or the reality of the situation no matter what anyone tells them. Trump's delusion has swept up millions in its wake, to put it more bluntly.

There used to be a saying in American politics (attributed to Daniel Patrick Moynihan): "You are entitled to your own opinions, but you are not entitled to your own facts." In other words, we can disagree about what we want to do about a situation politically, but the facts are the facts. We've got to admit to a shared reality if we're even going to have an intelligent political discussion about what should be done about things.

Trump, of course, inaugurated "alternative facts" into the political discourse. Trump thinks he can change reality by insisting on falsehood loudly and repeatedly. While president, he absolutely refused to ever admit that anything he said was wrong, even when it clearly was. Remember "Sharpiegate"? This was when Trump tried to change the reality of where a hurricane was heading (or projected to head), just so one inane comment he had mistakenly made could be vindicated as being right (it was not -- Trump was indeed wrong, and altering a map with a marker after the fact certainly didn't change that reality in any way).

That is Trump's view of reality. Reality is a malleable thing that can be shaped in the eyes of the public. It is not fact-based, it is based on belief. Whatever a majority of the people firmly believe is reality, to Trump (and to a lot of others, sadly). Evidence to the contrary or a dearth of evidence backing it up simply does not matter. Reality, to Trump supporters, is whatever Trump says it is. This is not just one man's delusion. This is mass hysteria so deep it could alter the course of American democracy.

Will a defense of delusion actually work in a court of law for Trump? That remains to be seen, of course. In fact, even though Trump's lawyers are currently making this argument in the media, Trump may not actually rely on it as a courtroom defense. Nobody will know what Trump's defense will be until the trial begins. This could all be just an attempt to bamboozle the public. But whether Trump relies on it or not in an actual courtroom, it is a rather astonishing legal defense, when you think about it: "My client is so delusional that it was impossible for the dozens of people telling him the truth to ever get through to him. His delusion was too strong, and he never wavered in his deluded thinking or admitted the actual reality of the situation." The really jaw-dropping thing to remember is that Donald Trump was president during this period. It's something that Trump detractors have long believed -- that his advisors had an impossible job of educating Trump about anything, because he was so delusional. In other words, "Trump is crazy" used to come from his political opponents.

But now "Trump is completely delusional" is coming from his own lawyers, as a way to explain why he tried to overturn an American presidential election. "He believed he won," therefore no actual laws could be broken, since Trump was so sincere in his delusional belief. But, as many have pointed out, simply believing that a bank ripped off some money from you does not entitle you to rob that bank. Other January 6th defendants have tried versions of the "but I really believed Trump won" defense, and it has not worked well for any of them. The law is the law, no matter how deluded you may be. The only way the law wouldn't apply is if you were of "diminished capacity," or not sane enough to know the difference between right and wrong. Which usually means you should be confined in a hospital, for your own safety and the safety of others.

I seriously doubt Trump's lawyers are going to try for any sort of "insanity defense," though. They won't be arguing: "He is a confused man and should not go to prison but rather to a hospital under a doctor's care," in other words. But if they stick with the defense of Trump being so delusional that he still can't admit reality, then at some point someone's going to bring it up.

No matter what happens in the courtroom though, the case Trump's lawyers are making puts the Republican Party in an extraordinary position. The frontrunner for their presidential nomination is quite obviously delusional. He's out there running on his delusion, and the crowds are eating it up. The GOP challengers to Trump who forcefully point out that Trump is deluded are not doing well in the polls (to put it as politely as possible). A majority of Republican voters are just fine with Trump's delusion, because they believe it too. That's where we are as a country, folks. Deep in delusional territory, and getting deeper by the day.

-- Chris Weigant

Follow Chris on Twitter: @ChrisWeigant