Let’s Make This a Trump-Free Thanksgiving

We can do it together, if we try.

This week, former Trump advisor Kellyanne Conway — who follows me on Twitter, hi, Kellyanne — gave a particularly illustrative quote. Discussing her former boss’ desperate, almost depraved need for attention, she said:

“This will be the sixth consecutive Thanksgiving where Trump talk will be on the menu,” Kellyanne Conway, a former counselor to the president, told The Atlantic’s Peter Nicholas. “People are still obsessed with him.”

After several fraught Thanksgivings in a row, for reasons ranging from Trump to the pandemic to Trump to the pandemic and Trump, I think I feel comfortable making a proclamation here: Six consecutive Thanksgivings of families having to talk about Donald Trump is way too many Thanksgivings. I suspect this is the sort of proclamation that has more bipartisan support than one might immediately suspect. Even a large percentage of people that voted for Trump — 70 million of you, I’m reliably informed — are surely tired of talking about Trump every single conversation now. This is one of the primary reasons, I’d argue, that 2021 has been better, or at least more tolerable, than 2020 for most Americans, even with inflation and shipping delays and Covid-19 surges: Without Trump in our ear every goddamned second, it just feels a little calmer. We…