Trump Is at His Worst, But Does It Matter?

From The New York Times: Mr. Trump’s performance on the national stage in recent weeks has put on display the traits that Democrats and some Republicans consider so jarring — the profound need for personal praise, the propensity to blame others, the lack of human empathy, the penchant for rewriting history, the disregard for expertise, the distortion of facts, the impatience with scrutiny or criticism. For years, skeptics expressed concern about how he would handle a genuine crisis threatening the nation, and now they know.

Well, that’s an impressive piece of writing if ever there were one.  But is the challenge facing Trump here materially different than any other that came before it? His followers know that their leader has all these characteristics that most people find dreadful, if only because it’s on full display every minute of the 24-hour news cycle, but they simply don’t care; in fact, they consider these traits to be personal strengths.

Two weeks ago, the pandemic was a “Democratic hoax,” and today he’s “always known that it was a pandemic.”  He proclaimed he thought the coronavirus was a pandemic ‘long before’ it was declared.  Nothing wrong with blatant self-contradiction. He rates his response to the pandemic a 10 out of 10, and that’s all that matters.

There was a time in U.S. history, i.e., from the inception of the union until the 2016 presidential election campaign, that Americans reviled disgusting people.  That was then; this is now.