You might have missed it, but the US Speaker of the US House of Representatives, Mike Johnson, appeared outside court on behalf of Donald Trump in New York City the other day. Johnson is an avowed evangelical Christian with performative hang-ups about sex: He once revealed, unappetisingly, that he and his son share an app on their phones that warns the other if one is using the device to look at pornography.

But that didn’t stop Johnson expressing his support for a man whom we all know had an adulterous assignation with a porn star – and was on trial specifically charged with covering up hush-money payments to her before the 2016 election.

Not too long ago, when scandals broke, cautious politicians backed slowly away from peers caught in an unwelcome spotlight. In recent years, it seems like the right in America has turned this all on its head. What gives?

The answer is a key philosophical precept of the goon squad mentality that has grown up around Donald Trump. He was mentored by a New York lawyer named Roy Cohn. Cohn is a notorious figure in American political history. He was an adjutant to Senator Joe McCarthy, the demagogue who used a blizzard of untruths and smears to catalyse the notorious anti-communist blacklists of the 1950s, which ruined the lives of so many Americans.

Cohn went on to a lot of other unsavoury legal work (representing mobsters and creeps) and was finally disbarred. (His legacy is such that he was turned into a malevolent figure in the epic stage creation Angels in America.)

Richard Nixon, who got his start watching McCarthy and Cohn in action, is a hero to this crew. His only mistake? Resigning. Their clarion call: Never give up, never back down, never admit you’re wrong. Instead, go on the attack and don’t let up.

This, of course, isn’t limited to the right. In the 1990s, Bill Clinton’s steadfast and ridiculous denials of involvement with Monica Lewinsky were obviously taken from this playbook. But Trump, with freaks like Roger Stone (who has an outlandish tattoo of Nixon on his back) and the dishevelled soon-to-be-inmate Steve Bannon telling him never to back down, has turned it into the most important force in the fight for his political life (and, perhaps, personal freedom).

You can see it in action everywhere. After the January 6 attacks, just about everyone on the right, Trump included, condemned the violence and outrages that occurred during the attacks. Then the ghost of Roy Cohn started whispering in Trump’s ear. Today, the rioters are heroes and those imprisoned for violent acts against police officers “hostages”. Never concede, always attack.