This end of the day line has become the question of choice for MAGAts living in a world built around the former president's lies. Arguments about the economy haven’t gained traction no matter how many times they’ve repeated them. Now, a leading question invites the faithful and the foolish to fill in the blanks with the delusions they like the best.
The implication, of course, is that somehow life was better when Donald J Trump was president in March 2020. It’s odd that, when asked to choose a leader later in the year, 81 million Americans chose somebody who wasn’t in charge in the spring.
Republican mythology would have us believe that the election was “rigged” or “stolen.” In court case after court case allegations along these lines have failed to stand up to even a cursory examination. It’s so bad that even Trump’s campaign speeches now avoid the word “stolen.” The vaguer words like “rigged” or “something happened” are thought to be more appealing to college graduates.
Three plus years of fighting a legislative uphill slog in congress and a sometimes overtly hostile judicial system have brought the nation out of recession. The huge stock market crashes predicted for the Biden years haven’t materialized. Based on standard measures of the economy, things really are better. .
Life in general isn’t better for a lot of folks. The wealth gap between the 1% and the rest of us continues to widen as a consequence of the decades of trickle down economics foisted on us by politicians of both parties. And the destruction wreaked upon the social safety net and the quality of life for the non-rich can’t be reversed with a snap of the fingers.
You wanna talk about the good old days? How about families that prospered with one wage earner? How about it not taking fifty years plus to save up for a down payment for a place to live in San Diego?
Monopolies and duopolies have no incentive to benefit anybody other than their owners and a few upper end managers. Yet inflation is claimed to be Joe Biden’s problem. It’s easy to forget that in the era when the middle class grew and the economy boomed economic growth was measured at least in part by benefits to going beyond the boardroom.
While this question about life in 2020, usually asked with a sneer, is supposed to refer to a litany of Democratic sins, there is zero evidence to suggest that doing things the GOP way will help much of anybody who actually needs it.
I suppose there will be employment opportunities in guarding the internment camps for immigrants (and for wrong thinkers thereafter), but I’d be willing to bet they’ll all be contract jobs without a future.
At social media site Bluesky some quick thinkers («<link)have taken up the gauntlet thrown down by GOP propagandists and are chronicling a day by day recollection of life in March four years ago.
March 6, 2020
Trump fires his third chief of staff, Mick Mulvaney.
At a visit to the CDC, he said he opposes removing sick people from a Covid-struck cruise ship because it will increase the US case tally. "I don’t need to have the numbers double because of one ship."
March 7, 2020, Saturday
As virus fears grow, Trump leaves DC for Florida to fete Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro at Mar a Lago. Seventeen members of Bolsonaro's entourage will later test positive for Covid. Brazil's former Health Minister called it "a corona trip."
Sunday March 8, 2020
On CNN, US Surgeon General Jerome Adams, 45, declares that Trump is “healthier than what I am." This does not reassure a nation suddenly looking to Adams for truthtelling in a health crisis.
March 9, 2020, a Monday
Stung by headlines already questioning the administration's response to the looming Covid threat, Trump spends the day tweeting defensively.
The Dow plunges 8%.
Tuesday March 10, 2020
The last day before everything changed. Trump starts the day tweeting about how Fox beat MSNBC in the ratings. Later he tells the press that anyone who needs a test can get one (no) and says: "We're doing a great job with it. It will go away. Just stay calm. It will go away."
For perspective, on this day 32 Americans had died and more than 1,000 were confirmed sick with the virus. NY Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced all gathering places, including schools and churches, would close for two weeks in a 1-mile "containment area" in suburban New Rochelle. This was still shocking.
Wednesday, March 11, 2020
This is the day things get real in the US. The WHO officially designates Covid-19 a global pandemic. The NBA suspends the season after two players test positive; every other sport soon follows. Tom Hanks and his wife are hospitalized. Wall Street is in free fall.
On Capitol Hill, government infectious diseases expert Dr. Anthony Fauci tells the House Oversight Committee, "things will get worse than they are right now." Three dozen Americans have died so far.
In a prime time Oval Office address, Trump abandons his rosy predictions. He says he will suspend all travel to and from Europe for 30 days, and all trade will cease. (After stock futures plunge, the White House says there will be no trade freeze and the travel ban won't apply to American citizens.)
Thus March 12, 2020
The Dow falls 10%, its worst day in 33 years. There is bedlam at unprepared airports as Americans, sick and well, flood home to beat the travel ban, many waiting for hours packed in confined spaces. Also, it turns out no one in DC warned European leaders about any of this.
Friday March 13, 2020
Trump declares a national emergency, freeing up $50 billion for relief efforts. Pressed about the slow rate of testing (at least partly due to a desire to keep case numbers low) and his axing of the pandemic prevention office, Trump states, "I don't take responsibility at all."
Saturday March 14, 2020
President Trump announces he has taken a Covid test and was negative for the virus. He had potentially been exposed a week earlier by several of the Brazilians he hosted in Florida. Tests for everyone else remain very hard to get. Airlines stop flying. Fear spreads.
Later, parents would be screaming about school closings. But today, they are mad that schools remain open. 16 states have closed their schools by this date. New York is not yet one.
Sunday March 15, 2020
The president declares a National Day of Prayer. Meanwhile, supermarkets are eerily bare, something most Americans have never seen.
Monday March 16, 2020
At the now daily coronavirus press conference, a notably more somber President Trump tells Americans to avoid bars and restaurants, limit gatherings to ten people, attend school from home and curtail travel.
Meanwhile stocks drop 12% - at 3,000, the biggest-ever point drop.
Not all the bluster was gone.
Reporter: "On a scale of one to ten, how would you rate your response to this crisis?”
Trump: "I’d rate it a 10. I think we’ve done a great job.”
***
There are 1.2 million Americans who aren’t around to remember the glories of March 2020. Anti-vaccination conspiracy theories are now responsible for a much higher death rate among Republicans than Democrats or Independents.
Also, do you know who thinks four years ago wasn’t the good old days? Forty out of forty four of the ex-president’s cabinet members who have declined an invitation to endorse his 2024 campaign. And then there’s the matter of the former Vice President’s refusal to endorse after he was targeted by a Trump-inspired mob.
Life under Trump wasn’t so good, was it?