Donald Trump’s lie about the 2020 election being “stolen” is about as big as they come, but it’s still not the biggest or even the most dangerous one he’s told. If his followers hadn’t fallen for this other lie, the election so-called “big lie” wouldn’t even have been possible.

Trump told more than 30,000 lies during his four years in office, but none of them compares to this one.

The biggest lie Trump has told his base is that he’s just like them.

In Trump’s world of doublespeak, this is perhaps the most Orwellian claim of all.

Trump is the philandering narcissist with multiple bankruptcies, yet somehow, he’s managed to convince his followers he’s a great businessman and a standard-bearer for Christian values who cares only about them.

He has managed to convince them he’s the exact opposite of what he really is.

That’s the biggest lie of all, because everything else is dependent upon it. If they don’t believe that, there’s no reason for them to believe anything else. If they don’t believe that they can trust him, why believe anything he has to say? And if they don’t believe he’s just like them, why should they trust him?

Once he’s convinced them of that, he can convince them of anything. Most importantly, he can convince him that because he’s one of them any attack on him is also an attack on them. So if they want to protect themselves, they have to protect him. That’s exactly what they’ve been doing, and it’s precisely what led to the January 6 insurrection: His base was trying to protect him, believing that in doing so they were protecting themselves.

This isn’t just conjecture or a hasty conclusion on my part. Trump admitted it out loud in the past few days.

As I wrote recently:

Trump’s followers see him, and themselves by extension, as being under siege by an enemy. He encourages them to identify with his victimhood, and they eat it up: “In reality, they’re not after me, they’re after you. And I just happen to be the person that’s in the way.”

Trump’s biggest lie isn’t about an election, it’s about himself. Once he got his followers to buy that, he could get them to believe anything, and that’s exactly what he’s trying to do.

Stephen H. Provost is a former journalist and the author of 40 books, including the trilogy Trumpism on Trial, examining the Trump presidency.