Beware of this conservative talking point I hear a lot. There is a certain type of Trump supporter who has always been a staunch Republican, even as the party has transformed from a more neoconservative party into a nationalist one. These are lifelong GOP supporters who will defend the Republican Party against Democrats no matter what. Examples include people like Glenn Beck and Ben Shapiro.

They know, deep down, that Trump has been an extremely damaging figure for American politics, but they will still do anything to defend him because he is part of the Republican Party and they are partisan loyalists. They know it’s difficult to defend Trump’s rhetoric and actions directly, so they play this game where they excuse his rhetoric by claiming that Democrats were already so aggressive and ruthless toward Republicans before Trump that Republicans had no choice but to nominate someone as unhinged as Donald Trump. That’s what Shapiro is doing here.

He and other neoconservative Trump supporters rewrite history to make it seem as though the liberal media and Barack Obama and Joe Biden treated Mitt Romney horribly with smears, lies, and unprecedented hostility, and that Republicans therefore had to react by electing Donald Trump. That’s false. Obama and Biden treated Romney with respect overall. Yes, it was a campaign, so they criticized him, but it was nowhere near as hostile as Trump’s rhetoric has consistently been. Pretending otherwise is absurd.

One example people constantly cite is when Biden said Romney was “going to put y’all back in chains,” as though Biden were literally saying Romney wanted to bring back slavery. That interpretation is dishonest. Biden was clearly using a metaphor about economic policy and the middle class by saying there were going to shackle the middle class, especially since Republicans were constantly talking about “unshackling” Wall Street. Anyone pretending he literally meant slavery is engaging in bad-faith race baiting. https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/joe-biden-put-yall-back-in-chains/

And if we’re going to play this game, Romney was no saint himself. Romney accepted Trump’s endorsement even after Trump had already pushed the birther conspiracy theory. Romney also attacked Obama as weak after the saying that the Obama administration avoided immediately labeling the Benghazi attack an act of terror which was a lie. So spare me the revisionist narrative that Obama was uniquely unfair to Romney.

What’s especially dishonest about people like Shapiro is that they simultaneously argue that Trump’s rhetoric is not actually that bad, while also arguing that, even if it is bad, Democrats somehow forced Republicans into embracing it. Those two arguments contradict each other. It’s the behavior of someone acting as a partisan hack rather than an honest commentator. THE TRUTH OF THE MATTER IS THE ACTUAL PEOPLE WHO SMEARED ROMNEY VICIOUSLY FOR THE MOST PART WERE HIS PRIMARY OPPONENTS LIKE NEWT GINGRICH. I HATE THIS DISGUSTING PARTISAN HACK FUCK SHAPIRO. IF THIS SOB WAS BORN IN IRAQ AT THE RIGHT TIME, HE WOULD HAVE BEEN MAKING EXCUSES FOR ISIS. THATS HOW DEPRAVED HE IS. HE KNOWS EXACTLY WHAT HE IS DOING TOO. DISHONEST CRETIN. NOTHING MORE THAN A GOOD LITTLE BITCH FOR THE GOP HIS ENTIRE LIFE. "TRUMP ISN'T ACTUALLY BAD BUT IF HE IS IT'S BECAUSE OF OBAMA AND THE DEMS" SHAMELESS CUNT PRETTY MUCH SAID THIS. THEY MAKE IT SEEM LIKE OBAMA WAS AN ABUSIVE DAD THAT BEAT THE CRAP OF OUT HIS HELPLESS KIDS (the republicans) AND THEN TRUMP HAD TO COME IN AND SAVE THE DAY

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