'Bizarre strategic fail': Ex-Trump aide bemused by GOP's latest campaign tactic

The GOP's new rallying cry, repeated by former President Donald Trump in his speeches and on social media, asks if Americans are better off now than they were four years ago when he was still the leader.

This has caused former White House Director of Strategic Communications Alyssa Farah Griffin to jog the memories of those who may be selectively forgetful.

"I’m perplexed from a strategy standpoint why Republicans are doubling down on the claim 'we were better off 4 years ago,'" she wrote in a thread on X. "We were literally facing down a global pandemic, under lockdown, facing a supply chain crisis, & the economy was in free fall."

Back in December, Trump was in New Hampshire and asked a crowd: “Were you better off five years ago or are you better off today?”

And he posed the exact question to his supporters on Truth Social.

So Griffin decided to answer it head-on.

"I was at the Pentagon pushing back on Chinese disinfo about the origins of COVID, we were countering fake reports daily that the US military was going to be [deployed] on US streets to enforce lockdowns, we deployed the USNS Comfort," she wrote, noting that the death toll of Americans succumbing to the effects of COVID tallied thousands and would soon grow to over "1 million souls."

She also recalled how the country's economy was reeling.

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"Millions would lose livelihoods, tens of thousands would lose businesses, many more homes," wrote Griffin. "Kids would fall behind in schools. 2020 was hell."

For her, the very thought of trying to glaze over what was a very rough patch in American history while Trump was the president is unfair.

"Now Trump boosters seem to be reflecting on pre-COVID times when the economy was objectively strong pre-pandemic," she explains. "But why use the specific metric of 4 years ago? A very specific period in time that no American wants to repeat?

"Bizarre. Strategic fail."