For Trump, the Year Is Always 2020
President Trump insists on revisiting and rewriting much of what happened six years ago, including the coronavirus pandemic and the election he lost. Many voters would rather he focus on 2026.
Katie Rogers, a White House correspondent, covered President Trump’s response to the coronavirus pandemic and the aftermath of his election loss.
Over the past few days, President Trump has been living in the year 2020, claiming that he defied his advisers to reopen the country during the coronavirus pandemic, saying that one of them, Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, was the one with all the “crazy ideas.”
He has revisited his near-daily falsehood that he won the 2020 election and that it was rigged, a belief held by a large swath of his political base. And, on Friday, he said that his supporters who ransacked the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, were simply on an “innocent journey.” Four people died that day.
Mr. Trump is not so much a student of history as a rewriter of it. In his second term, he is so set on avenging his election loss and pursuing retribution against his political enemies that he has Americans looking backward when many have signaled they would rather he explain why the country is at war with Iran, or help them afford groceries now, in the year 2026.
Neither his falling poll numbers nor the concerns among Republicans about the midterms seem to be modulating his insistence on revisiting much of what happened six years ago.
