Personally I think it started with Newt Gingrich back in the 1990's (although Bush (41) kind of started it with his Willie Horton ads). Newt's take-no-prisoners attitude combined with the dulcet tones of Rush Limbaugh started the grievance party that used to be known as the Republican Party. If you watched conservative media as I did in the aughts you could see the degradation of the conversation as the decade went on. And it really started accelerating (downward) when the Democrats had the audacity to nominate someone that (according to Giuliani) "doesn't love the country the way the rest of us do". I can't say that I predicted something as bad as Trump, but I did feel that something bad was going to happen when you heard all of the conspiracy theories and the almost complete lack of logic coming first from Limbaugh and Fox and then from the Republican politicians.
Wonderful! Thank you, particularly for pointing out that this has been going on for at least the last 15 years.
Personally I think it started with Newt Gingrich back in the 1990's (although Bush (41) kind of started it with his Willie Horton ads). Newt's take-no-prisoners attitude combined with the dulcet tones of Rush Limbaugh started the grievance party that used to be known as the Republican Party. If you watched conservative media as I did in the aughts you could see the degradation of the conversation as the decade went on. And it really started accelerating (downward) when the Democrats had the audacity to nominate someone that (according to Giuliani) "doesn't love the country the way the rest of us do". I can't say that I predicted something as bad as Trump, but I did feel that something bad was going to happen when you heard all of the conspiracy theories and the almost complete lack of logic coming first from Limbaugh and Fox and then from the Republican politicians.