A woman with whom I am acquainted has had a lot of fun in recent months sticking the proverbial needle into my backside.

She is an ardent Donald J. Trump supporter.

I … am not!

She has chided me for being “wrong about Trump.” I concede the point: Yes, I have been as wrong as one can be wrong. So have many other political junkies been wrong about this guy.

He now is the Republican Party’s nominee for president of the United States of America.

The Party of Lincoln is now the Party of Trump. It’s almost more than I can handle. It’s also more than many actual Republicans can handle, and by “actual Republicans” I refer to those who have fought the good fight on behalf of their party for longer than they care to admit.

Trump’s fight for Republican principles? It began about a year ago when the escalator at Trump Tower carried him down to the spot where he announced his presidential candidacy.

I’ll concede also that Trump has defied every conceivable expectation.

His countless insults all along the way have baffled me. He denigrates John McCain’s status as a war hero; he pokes fun at a reporter with a serious physical disability; he insults a respected news anchor who had the temerity to ask him tough questions; he calls journalists “sleazy”; he says voters in certain states are “stupid” because they voted for someone else.

Throughout all of that — and more — his ardent supporters cheer him on.

He has never run for elected office until now. His public service record does not exist. Trump has boasted about his extramarital affairs and still he wins the votes of evangelical Christians.

He plasters his foes with epithets.

Trump has tossed innuendo out like candy. He wondered out loud whether Ted Cruz’s father might have been complicit in JFK’s assassination; Trump tossed out the suggestion that Hillary and Bill Clinton had their friend Vince Foster murdered; and, of course, he has continued to suggest that Barack Obama is not a legitimate president, questioning his birth, his religious faith and just recently has implied he might be in league with the goons who shot those police officers to death in Dallas and Baton Rouge.

Yes, I was wrong in my belief that this buffoon could ever be nominated by a major political party to run for the presidency of the United States.

However, I continue to be baffled by the very idea that those who support him can still stand by their guy.