In 1990 the Melville Society decided THE FACTS DON'T MATTER. Now Trump's defenders have decided THE FACTS DON'T MATTER

Trump's lawyers have decided not to contest the fact uncovered by the House. They are simply arguing now that THE FACTS DON'T MATTER. Never let it be said that politicians are faster and smarter than academics.
This is what I am alluding to:

       In July 1990 in American Literary Scholarship (55) Brian Higgins printed my warning that Neal Tolchin’s transcriptions from family letters in Mourning, Gender, and Creativity in the Art of Herman Melville were not to be trusted, specifying a particularly disastrous misreading of a letter Melville’s mother wrote in February 1846. In December 1990 the Melville Society meeting was packed with new New Historicists, second-generation New Leftists (who had fervor but less purpose than the first), and a large group of second- and third-generation New Critics who had never done archival research and had certainly not been taught to do responsible research. Sitting up front with Harrison Hayford, John Bryant, and Wai-Chee Dimock, I misread the atmosphere in the room as one of free-floating political correctness, not sharply focused, but the mood of the audience was hostile from the start. When Wai-chee Dimock resurrected Lewis Mumford’s long-refuted claim that Hawthorne had based Ethan Brand on Melville (before he met him or  read anything but Typee), Hayford mildly reproved her, saying that if she thought it was acceptable to bring forth the Ethan Brand claim as a serious possibility, she was using a different standard for evidence than he used. At that, there was a subterranean murmur of anger in the audience like the incipient rebellion in Billy Budd, the mood hardening into fury that anyone’s idea could be considered invalid on grounds of biographical evidence. In the new post-scholarly climate to point out errors was to violate the playground rules: one should always enhance one’s playmate’s self-esteem. The audience was further incited by a man standing at the open door,  a satanic red-bearded stranger (more mildly described by Robert K. Wallace in Melville and Turner (611) as “the petulant stranger in the doorway”). The satanic onlooker  kept crying out, with regard to Melville and history, ‘THE FACTS DON’T MATTER.’”  ‘THE FACTS DON’T MATTER.’” ‘THE FACTS DON’T MATTER.’”  ‘THE FACTS DON’T MATTER.’” Accepting reality, I never attended another Melville Society meeting in the United States.