Peter Wehner, who was a senior aide to former President George W. Bush, warned Americans how President Donald Trump will try to duck widespread criticism of his handling of the coronavirus pandemic as he campaigns for reelection.
Wehner argued in a new column for The Atlantic published Tuesday that “Trump and his apparatchiks will not only step up their propaganda” but also “increase their efforts to exhaust our critical thinking and to annihilate truth.”
There will be “even more brazen attempts to rewrite history,” he said, “more crazy conspiracy theories,” more attacks on journalists and “more extreme appeals to the fringe base of Trump’s party, including right-wing militias.”
Wehner, who also served in the administrations of Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush, said the 2020 election is “a referendum on reality and epistemology.”
“Donald Trump is asking us to enter even further into his house of mirrors,” he wrote. “He is asking us to live within a lie, to live within his lie, for four more years. The duty of citizenship in America today is to refuse to live within that lie.”
Wehner said Trump has “become his own caricature” and is “indistinguishable” from Alec Baldwin’s portrayal on “Saturday Night Live.”
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