Do Americans Have a ‘Collective Amnesia’ About Donald Trump?

Not long ago, many Americans spent hours a day following the every move of then-President Donald J. Trump. And then, sometime after the riot at the Capitol on January 6, 2021, and before his first indictment, they largely stopped.

They have difficulty remembering everything.

More than three years away from the daily onslaught has blurred, changed and, in some cases, distorted Americans’ memories of events that felt harrowing at the time. Polls show that voters’ views on Trump’s policies and his presidency have improved in the rearview mirror. In interviews, voters often have a vague memory of one of the most tumultuous periods in modern politics. Social scientists say this is not surprising. In an age of hyper-partisanship, there is little consensus on collective memory, even on events that happened in public.

But as Trump pursues a return to power, the question of what exactly voters remember has rarely been more important. While Mr. Trump is basing his campaign on nostalgia not so long ago, Mr. Biden’s campaign is banking on voters refocusing on Mr. Trump, hoping they will remember why they gave him a second have been denied a term.

“Remember how you felt the day after Donald Trump was elected president in 2016,” the Biden campaign wrote in a fundraising appeal last month. “Remember walking around in disbelief and fear of what was to come.”

For now, the erosion of time appears to be working in Trump’s favor, as swing voters base their support on their feelings about the present, not the past. A New York Times/Siena College poll conducted late last month found that 10 percent of Biden’s 2020 voters now say they support Trump, while virtually none of Trump’s voters had switched to Biden. The poll showed that Trump’s policies were viewed much more favorably than Biden’s.

“What has been clear for a while, especially among swing voters, is that Biden is just more prominent,” said Sarah Longwell, a Republican consultant who opposes Trump and has recently conducted dozens of focus groups with conservative and swing voters. months. “They know what they don’t like about Biden, and they’ve forgotten what they don’t like about Trump.”

Polls show that Trump has also reached voters who may have been too young to remember his first term in detail. The nearly 4.2 million 18-year-olds eligible to vote for the first time this year were in high school when Trump was first elected. Polls show they have soured on Mr. Biden in part over his support for Israel in the Gaza war, saying they favor Mr. Trump on the issue even though Mr. Trump was also a stalwart during his time in office ally of Israel.

Ian Barrs, who works at a funeral home in Atlantic, Iowa, said other parts of Trump’s record seemed to have faded. He often marvels at how his Trump-supporting friends remember the years 2017 through 2019 as quiet days. They had all forgotten 2020 and the year of Covid, he said.

“Now I don’t blame Trump for Covid,” Mr Barrs said. “But all those things, the lockdowns, they happened under Trump.”

It is common for Americans to look back fondly on former presidents. A Gallup analysis in June found that 46 percent of adults approved of Trump’s handling of his presidency, based on what they “heard or remembered.” When Trump left office, his approval rating was 34 percent.

When asked what events he remembered about the Trump administration, Roger Laney, a 55-year-old independent, undecided voter in South Carolina, described a general sense of “chaos.”

“He made great media,” Mr. Laney said, recalling listening to public radio on the way home from work and thinking, “Okay, what did Trump do this time?”

The frenetic pace of the Trump years caused many Americans to turn Trump news into an obsessive habit — or tune out entirely. The rat-a-tat volume has coincided with the continued rise of siled, algorithm-driven social media and shrinking attention spans.

That environment created a sense of numbness that even 91 felonies or massive civil penalties for defamation and fraud can’t break through, says Andrew Franks, a professor of political psychology at the University of Washington.

“Negative information about Trump is no longer distinctive, it’s just the air we breathe,” said Dr. Franks. “It is the water we swim in. It just becomes a conditioned emotional response, where you either feel joy and admiration or disgust and anger when you see his face – but each individual action is just a drop in the ocean.”

Ross Kuehne, an independent from Candia, N.H., who endorsed Nikki Haley, Trump’s rival for the Republican nomination, said he remembered being overwhelmed during Trump’s term.

“It came too fast to process,” he said. “That was actually the genius of it: there was too much to keep track of. It looked like buses. Why be outraged about one thing when there will be something new in 15 minutes?

“America was stronger and tougher and richer and safer and more confident,” Mr. Trump said at a recent rally in Rock Hill, S.C. “Think about it.”

Paul Schibbelhute, a retired engineer from Nashua, N.H., who voted for Trump twice, doesn’t dispute part of the argument.

“My 401(k) was through the roof, I was making a lot of money, life was good. There was no inflation. There were good times,” he said. But Mr. Schibbelhute broke with Mr. Trump after he refused to concede defeat in 2020 and voted for Ms. Haley during his state’s primaries.

But Ms. Haley has not been able to dispel this version of the Trump presidency from the minds of enough Republicans.

“Everyone is talking about the economy they had under Donald Trump,” Ms. Haley said at a campaign event in New Hampshire in January. “It was good, right? But at what price? He got us $8 trillion in debt in four years. Our children will never forgive us for this.”

Political psychologists say that any event you can remember must have been important to you in the first place. James W. Pennebaker, a professor emeritus who studies collective memory at the University of Texas at Austin, said people are more likely to remember events that affect their lives, while events that are embarrassing or have a negative effect on people are more likely to be forgotten. he said.

Mr. Pennebaker noted that polarization and a fragmented media environment made Americans less likely to agree on solid facts, limiting the country’s ability to create a collective, shared memory.

“To me it’s almost breathtaking,” he said. “We live in a fascinating time where we see the other side threatening our existence, so we build up how great we are and downplay how bad the other side is. And it shapes not only the present, but also the past.”

That pattern is especially clear in the way people remember January 6. In the three years since the televised attack took place, Republicans have been less likely to describe the rioters as violent and more likely to absolve Mr. Trump of responsibility. This is evident from a poll by the Washington Post-University of Maryland.

Professional Democrats, who have watched Mr. Trump eclipse Mr. Biden in public and private polls, continue to believe the former president is not as strong as the surveys suggest. They argue that if they inform enough people about Mr. Trump’s record, voters skeptical of Mr. Biden will vote for him anyway.

“You can look back and have a kind of collective amnesia about how bad the policy was and how harmful it was,” said Lori Lodes, executive director of Climate Power, a liberal advocacy group whose poll found 52 percent of likely voters. now approve of Mr. Trump’s term in office.

The majority support for Mr. Trump emerging in the polls, Ms. Lodes said, is “not there now.” It is based on the false illusion of looking back.”

Jonathan Weisman And Christopher Cameron reporting contributed.