But perhaps the most forehead-smacking piece in the Washington Post began with a Passover Seder held by a woman whose guests jettisoned the usual reading of the ten plagues—blood, frogs, lice, and so on—for “Neo-Nazis,” “Fake news,” “Freedom Caucus,” “The American Health Care Act,” and other purported plagues from the Trump administration.
This was said to be a trend among Jews. “For some,” the paper intoned, “the big question has become: Is it right to cast the president of the United States as the villainous pharaoh?” There was no hint that this might be an inappropriate question, to liken an American president to the Egyptian ruler who enslaved the Jews. Not even Passover was safe from the anti-Trump virus.
Imagine for a moment that any of these stories and columns had been written during the last administration. Imagine anchors, comedians, has-beens, and ordinary folks drawing a gusher of positive press for calling Barack Obama a traitor, a liar, a fabricator, and someone reminiscent of Hitler and Pharaoh, and chastising him for presiding over an Easter egg hunt. Those critics would have been diagnosed with Obama Derangement Syndrome. But in the Trump era, it was a sure-fire ticket to good press.
