Abbreviated Pundit Roundup: Courts stay in session for Number 45

We begin today with Charles Blow of The New York Times writing that, like other former presidents, Number 45’s presidency is going through a process of rehabilitation and revision.

His revisionism has worked remarkably well, particularly among Republicans. A Washington Post-University of Maryland poll conducted in December found that Republicans “are now less likely to believe that Jan. 6 participants were ‘mostly violent,’ less likely to believe Trump bears responsibility for the attack and are slightly less likely to view Joe Biden’s election as legitimate” than they were in 2021.

This is one of the truly remarkable aspects of the current presidential cycle: the degree to which our collective memory of Trump’s litany of transgressions have become less of a political problem for him than might otherwise be expected. Even the multiple legal charges he now faces are almost all about things that happened years ago and, to many citizens, involve things that the country should put in the rearview mirror.

Indeed, in the same poll, 43 percent of Americans and 80 percent of 2020 Trump voters said they believe that the Jan. 6 storming of the Capitol was an event that the country needed to move on from.

Many Americans experienced the Trump years as traumatic, and one of the most bewildering aspects of this year’s presidential race is the way that so many other Americans are disregarding or downgrading that trauma.

Only straight white Christian male trauma is legitimate and must be acknowledged in America. Everyone, in any other group, simply has to “get over” themselves. Those are “the rules,” as Mr. Blow well knows.