That’s the title of an article that Gideon Rachman, an astute opinion writer for the Financial Times, published a couple of days ago.

Rachman starts with the caveats that Trump is a liar and that he tried to overthrow the government after he lost the 2020 election, but continues that…

…a lot of the current Biden anti-China policy is built on the framework established by Trump.

Rachman doesn’t mention, though, Trump’s panicky meltdown, no mask, no vaccine, inject-yourself-with-bleach, during the pandemic, causing, say, 250,000? unnecessary US deaths. Or his desire to disband NATO, in which case Ukraine would presumably be in Russian hands, with Putin now knocking on former Warsaw Pact doors. Or his opening the door for rival nations to supply agricultural products to China, damaging the US farmers who voted for him. Or his support for white racism.

Then there’s the weird case of Trump’s stolen secret documents. The mainstream narrative, I think, is that Trump is a real-world Smeagol, evil but pathetically obsessed with keeping symbols of his lost power. A darker narrative–no evidence I can see, either way–would be that he’s been providing access to these documents to prospective business partners and this is what the government wants to stop.

I take two important things away from the article. One is how quickly we forget. The other is that, ex the documents, if Trump had simply conceded defeat in 2020 we might be regarding him as the prohibitive favorite in the 2024 presidential race rather than as a breaker of his oath to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution.