Since Woodward’s expose Rage and The Atlantic report that Trump called our fallen and injured soldiers suckers and losers, there’s a new strategy in play among the more literate of Trump’s supporters.  I call this strategy revisionist apologetics.  Here’s the latest example courtesy of a fellow of the American Enterprise Institute.

The new strategy has two elements.  First, acknowledge Trump’s deficiencies but cast them as character flaws/personality defects.   Trump’s racism, fascism, greed, amorality, etc. are troubling but not disqualifying flaws.  For example, serial lying  is recast as a propensity for exaggeration or hyperbole.

Having tried many different ways to attack Biden, the Trump machine has apparently decided on Biden as Bolshevik.

Second, argue that as worrisome as Trump’s flaws are, Biden‘s are or will be infinitely worse.  Fear a Biden presidency because he is a leftist who will destroy our nation if elected.  Their fear mongering and race baiting paint a picture of communist hordes (and Black men) burning, looting and raping across white America.  Having tried many different ways to attack Biden, the Trump machine has apparently decided on Biden as Bolshevik.

Why the change in strategy?  Well with tape recordings of Trump in the case of Woodward’s book and John Kelly’s deafening silence in the case of The Atlantic piece,  denying these egregious offenses isn’t working.  Trump’s tendency to hoist himself on his own petard makes it harder and harder to argue that he is even close to an ideal candidate for the office.  Add to that 1,000 dead a day from CoVID-19 and what else can you do but recast Trump’s crimes against the American people as character flaws and paint Biden as the Bogeyman.

But getting back to the latest example of the new strategy: If I wanted paid propaganda I’d watch Fox News not read  an opinion piece by a fellow of a Russian cut-out/Trump-shill think tank.  The writer thinks we should stick with the racist, fascist, corrupt, Russian asset, anti-science, contemptuous of our democratic institutions, serial liar, morally bankrupt, mentally deranged, sexually deviant illiterate.  So let’s give this megalomaniac who gives no F’s about bounties on our soldiers, has zero respect for our military even less for our allies, whose ego, greed and incompetence murdered tens of thousands of us and who has spent more time watching TV and golfing than running (versus ruining) the country another four years.  Why?  Because Trump’s deviancy is just character flaws and Biden, a moderate by even Republican standards, is Lenin incarnate.  Pletka and her institute’s agenda is the same as Fox News’: keep Trump in power.  No surprise, a quick look at their web tells you they’re a Trump proxy. But what really gets me worked up is WaPo for dispensing with reasonable standards for what content including opinion is fit for publication.