If we want to avoid repeating history, we must hold Republicans such as John Boehner, George W Bush and Cindy McCain to account
Donald Trump made out like a bandit when he took office. According to a recent review of his financial disclosures, he pulled in $1.6bn from outside sources during his presidency. He wasn’t the only one to have profited, however. Trump’s political career has been terrible for the world, but it has been terrific for some of the world’s worst people. Many of the Republicans who helped produce the populist forces that got Trump elected have been raking in money while rehabilitating their images by opportunistically denouncing him. And, to a large extent, liberals are not just letting these people rewrite history; they are rewarding them for it.
Let’s start with John Boehner, the House speaker from 2011 to 2015. He is peddling a memoir about his political years which criticises the former president and complains that the Republican party has been taken over by “whack jobs”. Funnily enough, however, he avoids taking any responsibility for cultivating the extremism he condemns. Boehner was fine pandering to the rightwing Tea Party when it suited him. In 2011, for example, he refused to denounce the racist “birther” conspiracy theory about Barack Obama’s citizenship. “It’s not my job to tell the American people what to think,” he said. He seems happy to do that now that he has a book to sell.
