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Sarah Rice

I could have sworn I was around for the Trump years, but maybe I was wrong. Everywhere I went in Iowa — even to the rallies of people who were actively trying to stop <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/donald-trump/" target="_blank" class="contextual_link">Donald Trump</a> from being the next president — and everywhere I look on TV now, I keep hearing how wonderful the Trump years were.

“The best president of the 21st century,” said <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/elections/candidates/vivek-ramaswamy-2024/" target="_blank" class="contextual_link">Vivek Ramaswamy</a>.

“I think President Trump was the right president at the right time,” <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/elections/candidates/nikki-haley-2024/" target="_blank" class="contextual_link">Nikki Haley</a> said.

The first few times, I thought it was a mistake. Then I thought maybe they were talking about a different Donald Trump. Then I thought maybe I was the last refugee from another timeline in which things went completely differently.

“And on June 14, 1946, God looked down on His planned paradise and said, ‘I need a caretaker,’ so God gave us Trump,” proclaimed a video played at a Trump rally in Indianola. Riffing on “So God Made a Farmer,” <a href="https://www.mediaite.com/trump/trump-shares-messianic-video-about-god-sending-him-to-save-world/" target="_blank">the video insisted</a> that “God said, ‘I need somebody willing to get up before dawn, fix this country, work all day, fight the Marxists, eat supper, then go to the Oval Office and stay past midnight at a meeting of the heads of state.’ So God made Trump. ‘I need somebody with arms strong enough to rassle the deep state and yet gentle enough to deliver his own grandchild. Somebody to ruffle the feathers, tame the cantankerous World Economic Forum, come home hungry, have to wait until the first lady is done with lunch with friends then tell the ladies to be sure and come back real soon, and mean it,’ so God gave us Trump.” The video also insisted that he could “finish his 40-hour week by Tuesday noon, but then put in another 72 hours,” and described him as “the most diligent worker to follow the path and remain strong in faith and know the belief of God and country,” who would “finish a hard week’s work by attending church on Sunday.”

This bears no resemblance to anyone by that name that I can think of, but maybe I was following the wrong Donald Trump all those years and experiencing an incorrect reality. That, or the Trump campaign is banking on the assumption that the entire electorate suffered a massive head trauma at some point between 2020 and the present, causing them to forget relatively recent events, and ... it’s working.

In the Trump presidency I kept getting told about, everything was completely different than I remembered. The sky was bluer then. The grass was greener, of course. People were really patriots. Men were stronger, right out of central casting, and their teeth were whiter, and they all wept and said, “Sir, sir, we will give you everything you want — not just at the border, where we have finished construction on a beautiful wall, but with the economy, too, and abroad.” Flags flew everywhere. You could go down to the corner store and get a cherry phosphate for a nickel, and God loved the country more than He has ever loved it before or since.

Who did you say this wonderful president was?

Hmm, that name rings a bell. Didn’t I live through that? I could have sworn that I was there, and it was nothing like that. Every so often, you have an intrusive thought of this kind, and then you hear another Trump endorser — or even a Trump opponent — insist that things were wonderful, better than ever, and you start to think that maybe it is you who are wrong. Maybe you have been living in the wrong reality all this time, the one where it was a dumpster fire every day. Where, after he propounded <a href="https://www.aclu.org/news/immigrants-rights/appeals-court-declares-third-muslim-ban-unconstitutional#:~:text=Thankfully%2C%20the%20courts%20have%20again,countries%20from%20our%20immigration%20system." target=_blank>unconstitutional travel bans</a>, suggested bleach <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/trump-suggests-injection-disinfectant-beat-coronavirus-clean-lungs-n1191216" target=_blank>would be a good medical response</a> to covid-19, tried to make <a href="https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/462715-trump-instructed-admin-to-withhold-military-aid-for-ukraine-days/" target=_blank>foreign aid contingent on producing dirt on a political opponent</a>, separated families at the southern border, and generally lurched from crisis to crisis, he concluded by trying to overturn the results of a presidential election.

I understand that rewriting history is a big element of the current Republican platform. The Civil War was a fun dispute with a lot of beautiful people on both sides, about everything but slavery. But it’s especially uncanny when the history getting rewritten is so recent. It’s barely history. I was alive for this! This is barely two Taylor Swift albums ago!

And it’s not just the campaign. I keep turning on the TV and there is “Republican front-runner Donald Trump” getting talked about like he didn’t just say something that was an uncredited paraphrase of “Mein Kampf.” What year is this? What’s happening? Help!

If anything, the Trump campaign is better organized than before. And people are striding up enthusiastically to endorse him. Vivek Ramaswamy, <a href="https://www.politico.com/live-updates/2024/01/14/iowa-caucus/burgum-endorses-trump-00135535" target=_blank>Doug Burgum</a>, Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio, <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/elections/candidates/tim-scott-2024/" target="_blank" class="contextual_link">Tim Scott</a>! Don’t they know that this is Donald Trump? Donald Trump, twice impeached, who <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/interactive/2021/jan-6-insurrection-capitol/" target=_blank>encouraged a mob</a> to descend upon the Capitol “peacefully and patriotically” to intimidate Congress into overturning the election results? Am I the only one who remembers?

I saw a baby at the caucuses. The baby was well-behaved and then at the end of the evening was gently bundled into its carrier by a parent in a Trump hat. Now, I can see why a baby would caucus for Donald Trump. The baby would hear Donald Trump say things like, “Under me, everything was good, nothing was bad. We were respected abroad and secure at home. I am very good at governing and I am excited to do more of it” and be like, “Maybe! I wasn’t alive for that. It could very well be the case! Also, I don’t understand language yet and I have no sense of object permanence. Every time I see Donald Trump it is a miracle, and I don’t know where he goes when he disappears. I hope he isn’t gone forever!”

I understand this from a baby. But what’s everyone else’s excuse?

National Press Club Angele Gingras Award for Humor Writing 2016, Shorty Award 2016, Forbes 30 Under 30, Fifty Funniest People Right Now (Rolling Stone)

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Alexandra Petri is a Washington Post columnist offering a lighter take on the news and opinions of the day. She is the author of <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Alexandra-Petris-History-Important-Documents/dp/1324006439/">"AP's US History: Important American Documents (I Made Up).</a>

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