Defending The Donald (Part II)
Donald Trump has been blessed with the best possible enemies (woke Democrats) and cursed with the worst possible friends (worshipping MAGA minions).
The enemies benefit Trump because their lack of credibility works to immunize him from well-deserved criticism. Just about everyone knows that Trump could cure cancer tomorrow and establish world peace and the Democrats would reflexively condemn him for it.
Whatever Democrats say about Trump no longer matters to anyone, perhaps not even Democrats, since their anti-Trump hysteria has come to be purely obligatory and performative in nature and intended only to preserve their sense of tribal moral superiority.
The reverse applies to Trump's obsequious supporters: If the Democrats would condemn him for curing cancer, his cult would applaud him even if his policies drove the inflation rate to 100 percent and sent the vast majority of Americans out into the streets to live in squalor.
Again, a powerful symmetry is at work here: Democrats denounce Trump no matter what he does, and MAGA supports him no matter what he does, to the point where what he actually does becomes irrelevant.
There are no common standards being upheld or any disinterested discernment in all this, merely rote role-playing involving either condemnation or exoneration.
It seems to matter not in MAGA circles that long-standing........
