You’re right...they’d have to admit it, and while they know it, one of their secret weapons is that they never - well, rarely - admit it. And while I think a lot of them may be privately embarrassed by their boy, their whole lives are on the line now if they abandon him.
Now one has to ask who would have been stupid enough to believe him in the first place...the answer is, only a Communications major. Communications is famously the major of ditzes who can’t think what they want to do and aren’t very smart and don’t want to work very hard. Well, guess what...the entire country is now being run by them.
Most can't make a sentence with a subject and predicate.