What next for Trump - and Trumpism? - BBC News

Although he had just finished promising a small gathering of supporters that he would be back "in some form", the future for Trump - and the political movement he rode to victory in 2016 - is murky.

He was still beloved by Republicans, feared and respected by the party's politicians and viewed positively by nearly half of Americans, according to public opinion surveys.

Then Trump spent two months trafficking in unsubstantiated allegations of electoral fraud, feuded with party officials in battleground states, unsuccessfully campaigned for two Republican incumbent senators in Georgia's run-off elections and instigated a crowd of supporters that would turn into a mob that attacked the US Capitol.

While Democrats, independents and some moderate Republicans are against him, his Republican base appears to be intact.

"I don't think what we're seeing suggests he loses political relevance and resonance," says Clifford Young, president of US public affairs at the public opinion company Ipsos.

Many Trump supporters fully believe Trump's assertion that the election was stolen by Democrats, and Republicans, across multiple states.

Donald Trump ran for president as an outsider challenging the Republican establishment.

They bent, according to Liam Donovan, a Republican lobbyist and former Senate campaign strategist, because that's where the party membership took them.

Trump appointed top party officials, like Republican National Committee Chair Ronna McDaniel.

And at the state and local level, Republican Party officials are Trump true believers.

"The rank and file are hardcore Republicans, and hardcore Republicans are hardcore Trump people.

When controversies came - the violence following a white nationalist march in Virginia, recordings of immigrant children crying because of the administration's family separation policy, the use of teargas and brute force on Black Lives Matter protesters near the White House, the impeachment over pressuring Ukraine's president for political help and any number of intemperate tweets - the standard response from Republican politicians was to hunker down and wait for the storm to pass.

After the violence, his aides indicated that he was "pleased" with efforts in the House of Representatives to impeach the president for inciting the insurrection - a vote that 10 Republicans, including a member of the Republican leadership, broke party ranks to support.

McConnell's moves are the clearest sign that at least some Republicans are looking to put daylight between the party and Trump.

"President Trump is still the leader of the Republican Party and the America First movement," Republican Congressman Matt Gaetz of Florida, a loyal Trump supporter, tweeted on Thursday.

If McConnell and the Republican top leadership want to make a clean break with Trump, it could tear the party apart.

A slew of big companies - including Walmart, JPMorganChase, AT&T, Comcast and Amazon - announced they were either suspending their political donations or withdrawing support specifically from Republican politicians who supported Trump's challenge to the presidential election results.

Big business could, once the political waters calm, return to its normal giving patterns, says Donovan, or it could decide that their interests no longer clearly align with a Republican Party beholden to Trump.

If the corporate wing of the Republican Party is contemplating a break with Trumpism, social conservatives may not be far behind.

There is, of course, the possibility that Trump - despite his protestations and promises - fades from the political scene.

Other Republican politicians might decide Trump has proven that heterodoxy isn't so risky