Throughout the Trump presidency, we have seen attempts by Trump supporters to portray Donald Trump as somehow being the victim of vitriol from his opponents at a level that has been unprecedented in presidential history. The image at the top of this article is of a Facebook post that has been making the rounds in the month since the 2020 election, that follows this meme. But it occurs to me, as I read that post, that Trump supporters seem to have a very short, and highly selective, memory. The post above goes on at length about what “we remember” (“we” being the roughly 74 million voters who voted for Trump). So I thought I’d take a little time to respond with some of what the 81 million of us who voted for Biden remember. I won’t bother going point by point, since some of the points in that post are either false or are such distortions of what actually happened that they aren’t worth responding to. But I will respond to many of the points made, just in order to illustrate how ridiculous this Trump-as-victim idea really is (source stories are linked in the right-hand column):.
I could go on. The point, Trump supporters, is this: Trump has been treated no worse than his predecessor. And while any one of you might, individually, say that you personally idn’t do x or y, those of us on the left can say the same thing about any of the things listed in the Facebook post above. There are, to be sure, hotheads on both ends of the political spectrum. Both sides have people that go too far in what they say and do. But this business of pretending your side is all sweetness and light, and the other side is all evil and darkness is childish, utterly dishonest and even mendacious. It needs to stop!