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There are many things Donald Trump would rather we forget, but I’ll always remember the night he got booed in Alabama.

In August of 2021, Trump kicked off his political comeback campaign at York Family Farms, outside Cullman, in a north Alabama county where Trump had just won nearly 90% of the vote. Hard as it is to imagine now, it was far from certain then whether anyone would show. Could the former president, politically singed by January 6, still draw a crowd?

But despite late afternoon thunderstorms and a growing surge of support for Ron DeSantis, thousands turned out. Trump was a bit rusty, but the crowd cheered him anyway. At least until he brought up the vaccines.

The former and future president bragged on his first term’s greatest, genuine accomplishment — the record-breaking development of multiple COVID jabs. There should be no dispute: It was a momentous scientific undertaking and a national achievement to put in the American trophy case somewhere between the moon landing and the Manhattan Project.

There should be no dispute. But there was. To Trump’s surprise that night, the crowd began to boo. And they weren’t booing with him. They were booing at him. Trump had gotten sideways with his people.

“You’ve got your freedoms!” Trump said, beginning a mid-air pivot. “But I happen to take the vaccine. If it doesn’t work, you’ll be the first to know.”

After reassuring the audience again they had the freedom to stay unvaxxed, he quickly reverted to his old hit grievances and finished the night with applause.

I keep time-traveling back to that moment for a couple of reasons.

First, it may seem inevitable now, but at that point, Trump’s political future hung perilously in the air, like a daredevil stunt gone wrong. If he had said one more wrong word to that crowd, we might be living in a different world today.

Second, that night gave us an answer to critical questions. Is Trumpism more than Trump? Is he really in charge of the social phenomenon that put him in the White House? Was Trump the bullrider or the bull?

But what that boo of Warp Speed confirms is that Trumpism exists independently of Trump. It always has. It was here before he lent it his name, and it will be here when he’s gone. It can buck him off in a second if he’s not careful and leave him a bloody mess in the rodeo dirt.

And he’s in danger of slipping again.

Trumpism is not all one thing. It is a coalition of aggrieved constituencies — some of which harbor beliefs that might be best described as quasi-religions. Anti-vaxxers are one. Another is an army of amateur pedo-hunting sleuths who gather in Facebook groups and Reddit threads, where they attempt, like Hercule Poirot or Miss Marple, to unspool their tribe’s biggest mystery.

Who killed Jeffrey Epstein?

That sub-constituency might have forgiven an off night in Cullman. But now he’s telling them to forget what they’ve been obsessing over for the last six years, and we’re watching Trump again with only hand connecting him to the saddle.

After consistently promising to release Epstein’s case file — including a rumored client list — the Trump Administration is now struggling to pretend that’s yesterday’s news and aiming a firehose of putrid invective at anyone who brings it up.

“Their new SCAM is what we will forever call the Jeffrey Epstein Hoax, and my PAST supporters have bought into this ‘bullshit,’ hook, line, and sinker,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “They haven’t learned their lesson, and probably never will, even after being conned by the Lunatic Left for 8 long years.”

Trump’s seeming immunity to any accountability — political or legal — will leave a lot of folks clucking their tongues and reminding us all that we’ve been here before. But this time feels different. Trump isn’t at odds with Democrats or the media this time, but with that subset of MAGA.

The bull is mad. And the rider seems to be losing his grip.

Trump quickly appeased his restless anti-vaxxers that night in Alabama. But this time he seems unable to indulge them. Instead, what Trump is threatening is political amputation — severing a once-devoted segment of his base in a desperate bid for political survival.

Anyone in that crowd now must make a choice — swear off the cause they’ve devoted themselves to and recommit blindly to him, or go back to living in a political wilderness. A significant slice of Trump’s following is staring into a mirror today trying decide which is worse.

There’s only one reason for Trump to force his own people into making such a choice — the alternative for him is something much worse.

Thanks to the Wall Street Journal, we now have a good sense of what that might be. Trump’s relationship with Epstein went beyond attending the same parties, and the evidence goes deeper than a few photographs of the two men standing together in the same corner. The Journal reports that it includes birthday wishes, lewd doodles on a card, and a shared understanding of each other’s secrets.

It was bad enough that this news came from Rupert Murdoch’s newspaper, which Trump is now suing, but now the New York Times has corroborated at least some of their reporting. And there’s always the specter of more — especially in the FBI’s files.

Why did Trump indulge this segment of his base when he had to know these things were lingering in a drawer somewhere? The simple answer is that he needed those people to win. Now that he’s in the White House, it’s tempting for him to think he doesn’t need them anymore.

However, political support is a finicky thing. When it slips a little, it can break hard. The cracks here aren’t only between Trump and his once-dotting pedo-sleuths, but also between the president and his party officials in Congress. This has so divided his supporters on Capitol Hill that, this week, House Republicans retreated to their home states early rather than taking a stand now.

Delay and defer might have worked before. It’s not going to work this time.

It is an article of faith that the truth bats last. Yes, it’s taking its time getting here. But it’s coming.

Kyle Whitmire is the Washington watchdog columnist for AL.com and winner of the 2023 Pulitzer Prize. Subscribe to his newsletter, Alabamafication. It’s free.