Jonathan Last: “Trump’s first term turned out much worse than anyone feared. He did the mean tweets and some racist stuff. He deployed armed, masked, and unbadged federal agents to grab citizens off the streets. He did his family separation policy with migrants. Not great, but also not ‘end of the Republic’ stuff.”
“But then the sum of all fears hit. America was handed a real-deal, genuine crisis while Trump was at the helm and the result was that one million Americans died from Covid while Trump oversaw the greatest failure of the federal government since the Great Depression.”
“And then Trump lost his re-elect and attempted a coup.”
“How bad was this? If you went back in a time machine and described Trump’s Covid response and coup attempt to Republican voters in 2016, they would have accused you of being a hysteric.”
