Yesterday, Trump bemoaned how terribly he is treated as President. From a man who has never encountered a superlative he didn’t incorporate into everyday speech … not surprising. But I keep thinking about how Trump is treated in comparison to Obama. Fundamentally different stories, and one narrative has yet to be proven true or false. But even if Trump’s campaign literally had nothing to do with Russian influence in the election – simply had overly-trusting people trying to do the “right thing” and ended up speaking with the wrong people (I had eight calls from the dude, the last one ten minutes long because I was telling them to STOP CALLING ME). Even if we ignore abuses of power relating to the investigation into the nothing that really happened (you get charged with a crime you didn’t commit, try intimidating witnesses because the charges scare you or the bad publicity scares you … the intimidation itself IS a crime). The basic premise behind how Republicans treated Obama is that policies he advocates are so terrible that we’d rather literally accomplish nothing in the next four years. And any cycle you spend hosting a beer summit after making a completely fair assessment of public bias and police actions (seriously, would some old white professor have the cops called if he got locked out of his fancy brownstone?) or discussing birth certificates (hey, Trump, that would be yours) is a cycle not spent advancing odious positions. Agree or disagree with the positions, it’s a decent strategy that the Republicans cultivated there. Positions switch, and beyond play acting … are you really surprised to see the opposition using the same strategy?

Difference is that Obama had a halfway decent approach to dissent — Trump makes a dramatic reality show with a cliffhanger each week (and a bit like “how did you not expect to be red herring’d out of effectiveness” … voters, how did you not expect the reality show star to create, well, THIS!?).