I think Donald Trump’s exile from Twitter and this post-presidency quiet period have had a clarifying effect. I found during the last five years that I kept writing that Trump’s peculiar way of speaking and his constant lying, or shading of the truth, had a way of inuring the public. We all, just by constant exposure, could feel the emergence of a discounted “Trump standard” of speech that was notably lower than what we expect of even the most opportunistic politicians. It’s not that we deliberately tried to lower our standards, but that we were hostage to his.
Trump’s speech at the Stop the Steal rally on January 6 ages worse every day he remains silent and the “Trump standard” loses its grip over our imagination.