UNEXPECTEDLY: Steven Soderbergh Compares Trump to Movie Villain.

Steven Soderbergh misses the Old Hitler.

The “Sex, Lies and Videotape” auteur told Variety how much he pines for President George W. Bush.

God, the George W. Bush-era seems like the golden age now. Who would have thought we’d find ourselves wishing that things were that simple?

The two-term Republican president was slammed as Hitler throughout his White House days. Kanye West even told a telethon audience that Bush didn’t “care about black people.”

That was news to African nations that received billions in aid from the 43rd president.

Soderbergh shared that thought and more during a Variety Q&A tied to his latest film, “Black Bag.” The thriller stars Michael Fassbender as an intelligence officer tasked with investigating his wife for treasonous ties. The film co-stars Cate Blanchett, Naomie Harris, Pierce Brosnan and Regé-Jean Page.

“God, the George W. Bush-era seems like the golden age now. Who would have thought we’d find ourselves wishing that things were that simple?” Everybody who votes Republican. Flashback:

Strange, how a man once so reviled has gained stature in the memory. How we cheered when Richard M. Nixon resigned the presidency! How dramatic it was when David Frost cornered him on TV and presided over the humiliating confession that he had stonewalled for three years. And yet how much more intelligent, thoughtful and, well, presidential, he now seems, compared to the occupant of the office from 2001 to 2009.

Nixon was thought to have been destroyed by Watergate and interred by the Frost interviews. But wouldn’t you trade him in a second for Bush?

—The late Roger Ebert in the lede to his December 2008 review of Ron Howard’s Frost/Nixon.

For the institutional left, every Republican president or presidential candidate is Hitler, and then is inevitably rehabilitated as a wise, thoughtful statesman once the latest Hitler runs and/or wins.