We are not meant to remember that Trump was elected only with significant assistance from foreign election interference, widespread GOP voter suppression efforts, possible voting machine hacking, the racist antiquity known as the Electoral College, and a political press that has hated Hillary Clinton for decades and dedicated more airtime to empty podiums awaiting Trump's arrival than serious discussions of urgent issues like climate change or the erosion of abortion access.
Instead, we are meant to understand that Trump was a unprecedentedly strong candidate, an anomaly of GOP politics who won over the conservative elite despite their distaste for him.
It's an argument designed to work two ways: Either Trump survives in 2020, and thus he is a legend who remade the Republican Party and won over his detractors; or Trump fails in 2020, and thus he was just an outlier and the Republicans who are hesitatingly claiming they objected to his Trumpness will be back in charge where they should be.
There's a forthcoming book trying to make this case. [Content Note: Sexual assault] Its rewriting of history is extraordinary.
Of course it needs to be. The history is not easily forgotten.
There are various Republican reprobates key to Trump's rise who were interviewed for the book, and naturally they used the opportunity to try to rehabilitate their own images, as well. It's all part of the Trump Revisionism.
I'm particularly disgusted by Paul Ryan, that craven shitwheel, pretending to be some kind of hero by saying now that Trump isn't fit for the presidency.
I don't give a single shit what Paul Ryan has to say about Donald Trump. His speakership was defined by politics that made Trump an inevitability, and his refusal to hold Trump accountable for behavior he only now claims to find objectionable empowered and abetted Trump.
— Melissa McEwan (@Shakestweetz) July 11, 2019
Also: Paul Ryan is a liar who is auditioning for a sinecure in conservative media, lobbying, or think [sic] tankery. He'll say whatever he needs to say, and it will be as unprincipled as any other mendacious horseshit disgorged from his filthy maw over his opportunistic career.
— Melissa McEwan (@Shakestweetz) July 11, 2019
Paul Ryan is just another high-performing authoritarian villain. He's never been a hero and he never will be the end.
— Melissa McEwan (@Shakestweetz) July 11, 2019
Anyway. Keep your eyes peeled for more evidence of Trump Revisionism. It's going to come fast and furious ahead of 2020. It's gaslighting on an epic scale, and, when you feel like you're being thrown off a spinning carousel by the bullshit you're reading that isn't remotely real, know you will not be alone.
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