I’m sure we all have at least some idea of what a “witch hunt” is. Still, after hearing the term abused for so many years, it can’t hurt to take a moment and think about what it means and what the consequences of real witch hunts are. The farther we get from the 1692 witch hunts, the more we interpret the whole episode less like a serious lesson and more like a marketing opportunity. Trump is one of the worst offenders in the scramble to detach the concept of a witch hunt from its terrible origins. A witch hunt is not some historical curiosity that we can harmlessly profit from.