Rep. Elise Stefanik Mocked For Asking If Things Are Better Now Than 2020

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Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.) was mocked on Wednesday for having either a very short memory... or a very selective one.

In remarks following Donald Trump’s decisive showing on Super Tuesday ― where he all but clinched the 2024 Republican presidential nomination ― Stefanik, the House Republican Conference chair, attempted to update a rhetorical question used by Ronald Reagan during a 1980 presidential debate with then-President Jimmy Carter.

That question, of course, is: “Are you better off today than you were four years ago?”

It worked for Reagan, as the country was suffering from inflation, high gas prices and a lingering sense of malaise. But Stefanik’s echo of the question didn’t quite have the same potency.

The reason is probably self-evident to anyone old enough to be reading this: While many people are undoubtedly having a hard time today, 2024 simply isn’t the disorienting, dystopian horror that was 2020, when the world was turned upside down by COVID-19.

Not surprisingly, many users of X, formerly Twitter, tried to jog Stefanik’s memory about what we were all actually going through four years ago.