Clouded Memories Of Trump In Office
Not all that long ago, many Americans committed hours a day to tracking then-President Donald J. Trump’s every move. Then, sometime after the riot at the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, and before his first indictment, they largely stopped.
They are having trouble remembering it all again.
Americans’ memories of events that at the time felt searing have now faded, changed — and in some cases, warped. Polling suggests voters’ views on Mr. Trump’s policies and his presidency have improved in the rearview mirror. In interviews, voters often have a hazy recall of one of the most tumultuous periods in modern politics. Social scientists say that is unsurprising. In an era of hyper-partisanship, there is little agreed-upon collective memory, even about events that played out in public.
As Mr. Trump pursues a return to power and is staking his campaign on a nostalgia for a time not so long ago, President Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s campaign is counting on voters to refocus on Mr. Trump, hoping they will recall why they denied him a second term.
“Remember how you felt the day after Donald Trump was elected president in 2016,” the Biden campaign wrote in a fund-raising appeal. “Remember walking around in disbelief and fear of what was to come.”
For now, the erosion of time appears to be working in Mr. Trump’s favor. A New York Times/Siena College poll in late February found 10 percent of Mr. Biden’s 2020 voters now say they support Mr. Trump, while virtually none of Mr. Trump’s voters had flipped to Mr. Biden.
Many conservative and swing voters know “what they don’t like about Biden, and they have forgotten what they don’t like about Trump,” said Sarah Longwell, a Republican consultant who opposes Mr. Trump.
Polls suggest that Mr. Trump has also made inroads with voters who may have been too young to remember his first term well. The nearly 4.2 million 18-year-olds who are newly eligible to vote this year were in middle school when Mr. Trump was first elected.
Ian Barrs, who works at a funeral home in Atlantic, Iowa, said there were other parts of Mr. Trump’s record that have seemed to fade. He he often marvels how his Trump-supporting friends recall the years 2017 through 2019 as halcyon days. They all had forgotten 2020 and the year of Covid, he said.
“Now I don’t blame Trump for Covid,” Mr. Barrs said. “But all those things, the lockdowns, those happened under Trump.”
A Gallup analysis in June found 46 percent of adults approved of Mr. Trump’s handling of his presidency, based on what they “heard or remembered.” Mr. Trump’s approval rating when he left office was 34 percent.
Ross Kuehne, an independent from New Hampshire, said he remembered being overwhelmed during Mr. Trump’s term.
“It was coming too fast to process,” he said. “It was like buses. Why get outraged about one thing when there’s going to be a new thing along in 15 minutes?”
Asked what he remembers now, Mr. Kuehne, who plans to vote for Mr. Biden, mentioned what he considered low points: Mr. Trump noting he had “great friendship” with the North Korean dictator. A government shutdown. Mexico not paying for a border wall. Mr. Trump describing “very fine people on both sides” at a white supremacist rally in Virginia. His supporters storming the Capitol on January 6, 2021. That left out a host of other dramas.
For any event to be remembered, political psychologists say, it has to have mattered to you in the first place. James W. Pennebaker, who researches collective memory at the University of Texas at Austin,
Voters who ‘have forgotten what they don’t like.’
said people were more likely to remember events that affect their lives, while events that are embarrassing or reflect negatively on people are more likely to be forgotten, he said.
Mr. Pennebaker noted that polarization and a fractured media environment meant that Americans were less likely to agree on set facts, preventing the country from creating a collective, shared memory.
Professional Democrats argue that if they inform enough people about Mr. Trump’s record, voters skeptical about Mr. Biden will vote for Mr. Biden anyway.
“You can look back and have that sort of collective amnesia of just how bad the policies were and just how harmful they were,” said Lori Lodes, the executive director of Climate Power, a liberal advocacy group whose polling found 52 percent of likely voters now approve of Mr. Trump’s time in office.
That support for Mr. Trump, Ms. Lodes said, “is based on this false illusion of looking back.”