Incidentally, I wasn’t a supporter of tightened immigration, even though I at least understood that the reasoning behind tighter borders wasn’t always or primarily driven by xenophobia. But this is something else that got sacrificed in the determination to protect Trump. Republicans had a variety of opinions on policies, which we had debated frequently, but to protect Trump, we were supposed to advocate for the options he put out and shush about the rest. That was not how right commentary, for professionals or laymen, worked before Trump’s rise.