the old trump vs the new one, same as the old one but you didn't notice;
A growing number of MAGA voters are finding Donald Trump to be a colossal, dystopian disappointment. Many of these former supporters have taken to social media to wonder, ‘What happened to him?’
According to this perception of reality, Donald Trump was once America’s savior—a champion of the people, a warrior for freedom and against powerful interests, and the president of peace. But then something happened. He was compromised in his second term. He stopped caring and started selling out. Their hero fell from grace to join the swamp he once worked to drain. He abandoned America First principles to bow to Israel and AIPAC. He sold out to Big Tech, and he betrayed the MAHA crowd (to name a few examples).
I’ve seen countless expressions of this sentiment across social media platforms.
“I miss this guy…To see what he’s become today depresses me greatly,” reads one tweet accompanying a clip of Trump in 2016 criticizing the war in Iraq. A quote tweet of this clip says, “Me too, all of us OG real MAGA miss the guy we actually voted for 3 times, not sure what we have now.”
An Instagram reel titled “Trump before PAC money,” which features the same old Trump clip, has comments that feature a similar sentiment:
“He eventually became a real politician.”
“Before Don sold out! I just can’t believe he sold us out. He was a good first term president and terrible 2nd term.”
The only problem with these views? They’re rooted in a grotesquely false premise: that Trump was ever the anti-establishment hero he painted himself to be. The “old Trump” never existed. It was all smoke, mirrors, and rhetoric that told voters what they longed to hear (in a telling instance of this disconnect from reality, Trump received PAC money in 2016, when he made the comments in the featured clip, and was actively courting such donors)..........more..........
