It was never cute. It was gross, unbridled, and hostile bigotry, racism, sexism, and xenophobia in its purest form, and it managed to be just appealing enough to some white Americans in 2016 to swing the electoral college in Donald Trump’s favor.
But now, as Republicans helplessly watch Trump drive their party into the ground, his politics of toxic white grievance don’t seem quite as appealing as they once did.
“It’s like when a 25-year old gets drunk and shows up at a family engagement. That can be cute,” a senior GOP congressional aide told Politico . “But if you’re a 50-year-old and you show up at the gathering drunk and embarrassing, that just hits a little differently. It’s not cute anymore.”
It’s impossible to know for certain whether that GOP aide was a white male, but that observation—that Trump’s cruelty was ever cute—feels impossibly white and male. Nonetheless, that congressional aide was among those particularly down on Trump as Republicans seem to be cycling through different stages of grieving their demise
