Donald Trump speaks to his base. The 38 to 40 percent of Americans who still stand with the president love hearing the way he talks. He “tells it like it,” they contend.

I get that the president’s coarse public language isn’t everyone’s adult beverage. He was at it again this week, referring at a political rally in Grand Rapids, Mich., to the effort to find collusion between his presidential campaign and Russian operatives as “ridiculous bulls***.”

He drew laughs, cheers, applause, shouts of affirmation.

Do you remember what Candidate Trump said in 2016 about his voters’ loyalty? He said he “could shoot someone in the middle of Fifth Avenue” and he “wouldn’t lose any votes.”

Many of us saw that as a hideous metaphor when he blurted it out. These days I’m not so sanguine about that hideous boast. It is beginning to look to me that he actually meant it.

The “ridiculous bulls***” declaration is the kind of thing many of us would say in private. You don’t say it in public, in front of total strangers. But that’s OK in the eyes of those who cheer this guy on.

I mention this because Donald Trump has insisted on occasion that he would be “more presidential.” He hasn’t yet delivered on that pledge. I’m still waiting. And waiting . . . and waiting.