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 Donald Trump 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 Vivek Ramaswamy.
“I think President Trump was the right president at the right time,” Nikki Haley 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,” the video insisted 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.