Months later, the tea party had perhaps its biggest legislative victory when it disrupted the normally staid town hall meetings that members of Congress held over the long August recess. Then-Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi called the protests "astroturf," hoping that the organizing role played by well-funded tea party groups would discredit them. From 2009 through the Trump campaign, it was easy to find "serious" or "reasonable" conservatives who would denounce the voter anger they saw on the right. Black voters were repulsed by his birtherism — and indeed, Trump eventually walked it back, though without apologizing to Obama. Plenty of Trump-mockery can be dismissed as empty choir-preaching, like how John Oliver's "eviscerations" of Trump go viral only with people who hate Trump already.

Source: Washington Post January 16, 2017 16:35 UTC