Related, if not the same, is that there's a tendency to pain certain actions by the Trump administration as somehow being unprecedented or "not what America is about" or whatever. The degree matters in all such things, of course, and not everything that is similar is precisely the same, but pointing out that no, actually, all (or most of) this was happening before, is not a defense of Trump. Or to put it another way, when the Trump era is over, I hope all the shit that was "bad" under Trump is still thought to be bad.
