Hello evince,
Even before that. There was the whole 'commie' scare in the 50's. btw, the mafia lawyer Trump used, Roy Cohn, was the same one used by 50's Republicans to intimidate people in that effort.
But lately, it has just become bizarre. They routinely ignore the news and invent their own reality.
I guess if you don't want to admit what's really going on in the world, one option is to go Republican and just live in a pretend alternate universe. Too bad the whole point of that is servicing the super-rich and their corruption of our government (despite what Republicans think.)