A little reminder that this is who the Republican Party has always been.

This didn't start with Trump. As Driftglass rightfully noted, this is simply a continuation, not an aberration:

It is time once again for a feature you will only find on OG Liberal blogs that dare to dig back into the Before Time to notice how much of the deranged, disastrous Trump policies are not an aberration but a continuation of the trajectory the Republican party has been on for decades.

Now we could spend this post talking about Republican hypocrisy around debts and deficits, their reliance on demonizing relatively powerless groups to win elections, or their obsession with stripping women of their bodily autonomy. But since today's headlines are all about a ruinous Republican war-of-choice in the Middle East, let's talk about that. And let's begin by reminding ourselves that next week will mark the 22nd anniversary of this moment from the 2004 White House Correspondents' Association Dinner.

You know, back in the Good Old Days! Back when Republicans took America to war soberly and seriously, with careful preparation and on the basis of unimpeachable intelligence!

[...]

Yes, that was the previous Republican president, George W. Bush, cracking wise about not finding WMD in Iraq. Which, you might remember, was the entire predicate for that disaster. And right therewith him, applauding and laughing their asses off, were Washington's political elite, the cream of the Washington press corps and their celebrity guests. Because Bush making light of not being able to find the WMD was just so damn funny!

And those same people are applauding and lying for Trump to this day.

Here's more from Democracy Now! on Bush's disgusting display from 2004:

While millions of people marked the first anniversary of the invasion of Iraq this week by protesting against war on Saturday, President Bush marked the event in a different way: joking about how no weapons of mass destruction were found.

At a black-tie dinner for Radio and Television Correspondents’ Association on Wednesday, Bush poked fun at himself and his administration for among other things not finding weapons in Iraq.

At one point Bush showed a photo of himself looking for something out a window in the Oval Office. He said: “Those weapons of mass destruction have got to be somewhere.”

After a few more slides, there was a shot of Bush looking under furniture in the Oval Office. Bush said “Nope. No weapons over there.” Then another picture of Bush searching in his office. He said “Maybe under here.”

According to the Nation’s David Corn many of the journalists at the dinner laughed throughout the skit.

But the New York Daily News is reporting that the families of soldiers killed in Iraq are not laughing.

The more things change, the more they stay the same. Fox is treating this latest debacle like it's a video game with no real lives at stake and has been misleading everyone about how things are going.

It took years and more tragedies under Bush to finally wake at least some Republicans up, and then they just pretended they never heard of him and moved on and tried to rebrand as the so-called "tea party."

How long before the rats start jumping ship this time around?