Just something MAGA-people seem to have a hard time with sometimes. Probably not as much when Americans are speaking to themselves, but as a non-American, sometimes it’s challenging to get “those people” to admit that there is indeed anything wrong with the US. As in they won’t accept a single criticism, and will loudly proclaim “America is the greatest country in the world”, while wearing a “Make America Great Again” hat, which for me pretty explicitly means America isn’t great, if it has to be made to be such again.
That’s what the republicans tried to make people believe, because that’s more palatable to the public than the actual reason, which was that racists were mad about having a black president for 8 years who worked to make the lives of various minority groups better. It’s a zero-sum mindset and they think they suffered and got less while those ‘who don’t deserve it’ got free handouts, which has little to no basis in reality.