Since the stomach-turning assassination attempt against Donald Trump, some have wondered whether it is required to shade the truth about him in light of that awful event.

It isn’t.

The obvious truth about the former president remains what it was before. And the phrase that best describes telling the truth about him isn’t “Trump Derangement Syndrome.”

It’s “being awake.”

The most compelling witnesses to what a catastrophe Trump would be if returned to the Oval Office aren’t Democrats. They are leading Republicans who fell over one another at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee seeking his favor, hoping to erase The Big Guy’s memory of what they had said about him on earlier occasions.

Take Trump’s own Vice Presidential nominee, J.D. Vance, for starters. “I’m a ‘Never Trump’ guy,” Vance said about his new BFF back in 2016. “I never liked him.”

Want to know why? “My god, what an idiot,” Vance tweeted about his future running mate. “Mr. Trump is unfit for our nation’s highest office,” he wrote in The New York Times. “I can’t stomach Trump,” Vance told NPR at the time. “I think that he’s noxious.”

And not just noxious. Vance sent a Facebook message to a former roommate wondering if Trump could be “America’s Hitler.”

But hey.

Then there’s Nikki Haley, who was quite clear about her estimation of Trump just a couple of months ago. Trump was “badly wrong” about the January 6, 2021 coup attempt, she said days afterward, and “we shouldn’t have followed him.” As  for Republicans who have supported him, she said not long ago, “They know what a disaster he’s been and will continue to be.” This February she diagnosed him as “completely unhinged.”

Then there’s Senator Mario Rubio, who also took the stage in Milwaukee to kiss Trump’s ring. In 2016 Rubio told CNN “For years to come there are many people on the right, in the media and voters at large, that are going to be having to explain and justify how they fell into the trap of supporting Donald Trump.” Rubio told one crowd that Trump “runs on this idea that he is fighting for the little guy. But he has spent his entire career sticking it to the little guy….  If you all have friends who are thinking about voting for Donald Trump,  friends do not let friends vote for con artists.”

Also in Milwaukee was Senator Lindsey Graham, who famously once called his party’s nominee a “kook,” “crazy” and “unfit for office,” before going servile. “The more you know about Donald Trump, the less likely you are to vote for him,” he said.  “The more you know about his business enterprises, the less successful he looks.”

Senator Ted Cruz had this to say about Trump eight short years ago: Trump, said Cruz, was a “sniveling coward,” a “bully,” a “small and petty many who is intimidated by strong women,” a “narcissist” who is “utterly amoral,”  a “pathological liar” who “lies practically every word that comes out of his mouth.”

But only “practically” every word.

Let’s not forget his former chief of staff, General John Kelly, who said last October that Trump is “a person who thinks that those who defend their country in uniform, or are shot down or seriously wounded in combat, or spend years being tortured as prisoners of war, are all ‘suckers’ because ‘there is nothing in it for them.’” Asked about Trump’s lock on the GOP nomination even then, Kelly had a three word answer: “God help us.” Trump, said Kelly, is “a person that has nothing but contempt for our democratic institutions and the rule of law.”

On the positive side, those who endorsed him in Milwaukee just before he took the stage to accept the nomination included such powerful validators as Hulk Hogan and Kid Rock. Jimmy Hoffa was evidently unavailable.

The assassination attempt on Trump was an outrage, an example of how volatile America has become. But sugar-coating Donald Trump is foolish. Just listen to the elephants in the room.

Jeff Robbins’ latest book, “Notes From the Brink: A Collection of Columns about Policy at Home and Abroad,” is available now on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Apple Books and Google Play.