Former Rep. Joe Walsh (R-IL), a Republican who once backed President Donald Trump, said in a post on X on Thursday that a current Trump supporter told him he knows the president lies to him frequently — and will keep backing him anyway. Walsh, a Tea Party-aligned lawmaker who represented Illinois's 8th District for one term, later broke with Trump and even launched a challenge against him for the 2020 Republican presidential nomination before ending his campaign.

" Trump voter just told me — 'I know Trump lies to me all the time, and I don't care. As long as I get tax cuts, right wing judges, and mass deportations, he can lie to me all he wants,'" Walsh wrote. "I give you examples every week of Trump voters who've seen the light and finally turned on Trump. They're the exception. The vast majority will never turn against Trump. Like that guy."

He appended a pointing-finger emoji and concluded: "He's unreachable."

It was not the first time Walsh has called out Trump supporters for sticking by the president no matter what he does. In February, he explicitly compared them to a cult for continuing to back Trump after it became clear he was going to break his promise to keep America out of wars in order to invade Iran.

"I thought you wanted him to end wars all over the world," Walsh wrote on his blog at the time. "You said you wanted him to end American entanglement in conflicts and wars around the world. America shouldn't be involved in these wars, you said. That's why you're voting for Trump, you said."

He argued that Trump had plainly broken that pledge when it came to Iran.

"And you don't like when people call you a cult, Trump voters? What else are people to think when you voted for Trump to get us the hell out of wars around the world, and instead he gets us involved in wars around the world and starts new wars, and you still sing his praises and support him? What are we to think, MAGA, but that you are a cult?" he continued.

"You've got no argument against people calling you a cult. And if he takes us to war against Iran, and you clap and applaud and throw him flowers, Trump supporters, I will be at the front of the parade calling you a cult," he wrote.

In August, Dr. Steven Hassan — a cult expert, a former member of the Unification Church who has spent decades counseling people leaving high-control groups, and the author of "Combating Cult Mind Control" and "The Cult of Trump" — told AlterNet that Trump supporters engage in cult-like behavior because of the news environments they choose to enter.

"Going back to your initial question about how people are voting against their self-interest — it really comes down to what information sources they're relying on and who their network is that they identify with," Hassan told AlterNet. "So if they really love Joe Rogan, they're going to follow a lot of his views. And consequently, when he turns against Trump, Trump loses a lot of followers. What I'm trying to convey is that we're living in an age of digital manipulation that's never been seen before, with people's personal data being used to silo information — to drive them further left if they're already progressive-leaning, or further right if they're already Republican or conservative-leaning. And it's quite strategic in its use of algorithms."

"So it's not simply about looking at personality type, Matthew — the disposition of a person who becomes a Trump follower — but the social and information environment people are being subjected to," he added.

Also in August, Dr. Stephan Lewandowsky, a cognitive scientist and professor of cognitive science at the University of Bristol whose research examines how people respond to misinformation, told AlterNet that people grav toward Trump because he validates their prejudices.

"If you sort of give an instrument to people that measures their racism and misogyny, well, it tells you about who they're gonna vote for and all that kind of stuff pretty well," Lewandowsky told AlterNet.