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):.
| 74 MILLION TRUMP VOTERS REMEMBER: | 81 MILLION BIDEN VOTERS REMEMBER: |
|---|---|
| “For the last 4+ years, the Democrats have gone scorched earth. You have salted the fields and now you want to grow crops.” | We remember 8 years during which a Republican Senate minority did its level best to prevent anything Obama tried to do, even refusing to hold nomination hearings on dozens of federal court nominees and one Supreme Court nominee. That wasn’t “scorched earth?” |
| “We remember the women’s march (vagina hats and all) the day after inauguration.” | We remember thousands of torch- bearing, racist thugs marching in Charlottesville chanting, “Jews will not replace us,” and a president who called them “very fine people.” |
| “We remember the constant “not our president” and the “Resistance…”” | Do a Google search of the string “Obama is not my president” from 2/1/2009 through 12/31/2015. |
| “We remember a “comedian” holding up the President’s severed head.” | We remember hundreds of racist memes and cartoons about Obama and his family;
7 disgustingly racist anti-Obama cartoons; and a story noting that Obama faces vile insults like no other president has. |
| “We remember Nancy Pelosi tearing up the State of the Union Address.” | We remember Rep. Joe Wilson rudely interrupting a speech by Obama before a joint session of Congress, shouting “You lie!” in response to a point about which President Obama was NOT lying. |
| “We remember the non-stop and live fact checking on our President and his supporters.” | We remember a president whose lies were so blatant and frequent that live fact-checking became necessary to accurately informing the public. |
| “We remember five Senators shot on a ballfield.” | We remember Heather Heyer, murdered by a deranged Trump supporter in Charlottesville. |
| “We remember people banging on the Supreme Court doors.” | We remember armed protesters storming the Michigan legislative chamber, and armed protesters surrounding the Michigan Secretary of State’s home.
And, we remember Trump fans wearing MAGA hats and holding semi-automatic rifles protesting outside election centers. |
I could go on. But 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 didn’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!
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Written by markpkessinger. Cross-posted from Daily Kos.
