The #Resistance Got a Lot Wrong in Trump I
Today’s liberal anti-Trump Resistance is stronger than it was in his first term, precisely because it has taken seriously some of the arguments of its critics.
Forgetting the Left’s criticisms of the liberal Resistance during Trump’s first term risks making that movement a less effective bulwark against any sort of fascist or fascist-like movement taking power in the United States. (Scott Olson / Getty Images)
After a year of Donald Trump defying court orders, trampling free speech, and now operating a literal reign of terror against a city that didn’t vote for him, a new refrain is quickly gaining popularity: the liberal “Resistance” has been vindicated by this presidency.
“One day they will admit that the resistance libs were always right,” tweeted Center for American Progress president and CEO Neera Tanden.
That sentiment has been repeated by a slew of liberal commentators recently, who think that what critics in Trump’s first term disdainfully referred to as the “#Resistance” — the coalition of card-carrying members of the Democratic establishment like Tanden and rank-and-file liberals like the pussy-hat-wearing protesters of the 2017 Women’s March — are owed an apology. As Trump increasingly acts like an unstable wannabe dictator, their comparisons of him to Adolf Hitler or Benito Mussolini, or warnings that he was on the road to eliminating US democracy, no longer look like overwrought hysterics. They look prescient.
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