Despite his unearned reputation for candor, there is perhaps no better performer in the 2016 presidential race than Donald Trump. Prior to his decision to seek the Republican nomination, his policy preferences were those of common to elite fixtures in New York City’s refined socialite scene. The reality of Trump and the figure that has been molded and polished by his admirers in the conservative media complex are two very different people, but Trump has so far done a capable job of keeping the contempt he once showed for conservatives and the values they cherish in check. That was, until this weekend.

Over the weekend, something remarkable occurred: Trump let the veil slip. In an appearance at an Iowa Christian college, the celebrity candidate marveled at the seeming unflappability of his fans and the reverence they hold for him. “I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody, and I wouldn’t lose any voters, OK?” he joked. “It’s like, incredible.”

Indeed, it is. Trump’s supporters have spent the weekend defending the candidate’s callous remark as an obvious joke, as though the reality television star’s detractors failed to grasp the artful subtlety of his jab. There is no humor without truth, and the veracity at the root of Trump’s jest at his supporters’ expense is that they are utterly undiscerning. Trump’s attempt at dark humor was successful because it was undeniably true.

This moment was also reflective of a broader trend in the Trump campaign. There has been a barely perceptible shift in candidate’s tone as early state polls and prediction markets begin to reinforce the notion that the Republican presidential primary process might be over before it begins. Republican elders are preparing for a drawn-out contest that won’t be resolved until convention delegates hit the floor in Cleveland, but they might find that a Trump trifecta in the first three states would render the outcome of the race a foregone conclusion. Unlike any other candidate in the race for the Republican presidential nomination, Trump’s pivot to the general election will need to be uniquely focused on low propensity voters, swingy independents, and disaffected Democrats if he is to win in the general election. Trump needs Republicans in November less than any of his GOP competitors, and he knows it.

Average Americans don’t read the polls in the way that pundits do. Voters don’t pour over crosstabs, and they don’t break down demography after they peruse the top line results. Most are probably unaware of the candidates’ favorability ratings or even how they perform in head-to-head matchups against their Democratic counterparts. They rely on the pundit class to accurately relate the results of pre-election surveys so that they can make an informed choice at the ballot box. In that sense, the conservative voter has been done a grave disservice by the voices they trust most. How many Trump-supporting conservatives who get their news from radio and cable television know that no one, not even Hillary Clinton, is less trusted by the American electorate?

“Roughly half (52%) think Trump would make a poor or terrible president, with 38% saying he would be terrible. Just 12% think Trump would be an average president,” Pew Research Center revealed this weekend. In his favorability ratings measured by an NBC News/Wall Street Journal survey, Trump is underwater among every key voting block; African-Americans (72 points), Latinos (47 points), women (36 points), independents (26 points), and suburban voters (24 points). It’s hard to find any demographic other than self-described Republicans who view Trump positively and think he would make a good president. This is a portrait of a figure that cannot win the general election unless he transforms into an exceptionally conventional center-left candidate. The groundwork for that metamorphosis is already being laid.

“When I’m president, I’m a different person,” Trump told another audience of idolaters this weekend. “I can be the most politically correct person you’ve ever seen.” You might think this admission against interest would shake the intellectual foundations of those that gravitated toward Trump due to his unvarnished and unapologetic abstention from tact – a personality quirk his supporters confuse with being “un-politically correct.” But this isn’t the first time Trump has admitted that his truth-teller persona is a pretense. “Trump to reporters on plane ‘it would be a different tone’ if he were [president],” CBS News reporter Kelly Atwood revealed in late December. “Now adds: I can be more PC than any guy in Washington.” In fact, Trump has been more honest about the masquerade in which he is participating than many of those media figures furbishing his image for voters who still maintain some attachment to conservative principles.

All of the Republican presidential candidates will need to pivot toward the center for the general election. Of all of them, however, only Trump’s reputation among the voters who traditionally decide presidential races is so poor that he will have to present himself a centrist Democrat in order to make the final pitch. The transition should not be too difficult; after all, it was only months ago that Trump was selling himself as a liberal reformer on matters like expanding access to health coverage, immigration reform with an eye toward legalization, and gun control. The only uncomfortable fit should be for Trump-backers in the media who choose to participate in the charade, and they don’t seem to have any problem shedding their conservative credentials in order to prop up Trump.

Former vice presidential candidate-turned-television personality Sarah Palin is in Iowa backing the only candidate in the race who supports expanded ethanol mandates and federal subsidies; the very definition of the “crony capitalism” she has spent years inveighing against. “Nationalism and populism have overtaken conservatism in terms of appeal,” declared conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh. Curiously, this observation was not made through tears but was instead pronounced joyously. You see, Washington is afraid of nationalism, and anything Washington fears can’t be that bad. Except that, Washington does not fear Trump. From Trent Lott, to Bob Dole, to Orrin Hatch, the Republican professional political class inside the Beltway is making peace with the candidate who supposedly represents the party’s insurgent wing. Even this apparent union between the Republican Party elites and their conservative detractors (at the expense of true conservative reformers like Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio) hasn’t led to any soul-searching on the part of Trump’s backers in media. Even many of the personalities on Fox News Channel, as conservative media critic Bernard Goldberg observed, are admonishing the conservative intellectual wing for failing to get in line behind the GOP’s frontrunner – an argument that they declined to make when that honor belonged to Mitt Romney four years ago.

The transition has already begun. Trump will soon abandon the conservative marks to which he had to appeal only in order to secure the nomination. And once Trump sheds the ill-fitting conservative disguise he was compelled to briefly and gracelessly assume, his boosters in the sometimes-conservative media will transform with him. They’ve already declared their intention to do so, and all so that one of their own – an entertainer – might yield them the insider status they secretly coveted as outspoken critics of the “establishment.” Like all confidence games, this is not a victimless crime. The trust and faith of conservative voters have been abused. Unfortunately, they might not notice until it is too late.