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Republicans have their excuse for Donald Trump’s abusive, inappropriate behavior: he just doesn’t know any better.
“Of course there needs to be a degree of independence” between federal law enforcement and the White House, Ryan said. But he added, “The president’s new at this. He’s new to government, and so he probably wasn’t steeped in the long-running protocols that establish the relationships between [the Justice Department], FBI and White House. He’s just new to this.”
Ryan later said he was “not saying it’s an acceptable excuse,” except that of course he totally was. His initial answer wasn’t just Ryan spitballing. Expect to hear variations on this from Republicans, because … what else are they going to say?
“It has to still be legal and right and all that, but I think a lot of it is — he’s used to being the CEO,” Rep. Kevin Cramer (R-N.D.), an early Trump endorser, said Wednesday after Comey’s preliminary statement was published.
“And all that.” Laws, ethics, yada yada blah blah blah. When you’re the CEO, you get to bully and intimidate whoever you want! But guys. Guys. Even if all this is true, does a 70-year-old man who runs a long campaign for a job and then spends a couple months preparing to start that job not have some kind of responsibility to learn what that job entails? If someone gets thrown headfirst into a pool unexpectedly, “he didn’t know how to swim” is a reasonable excuse for what follows. If someone begs to be allowed onto the swim team and then is told “okay, you can be on the swim team starting in two months” and at his first swim meet it turns out he hasn’t bothered to learn to swim, that is on him. Except here, Trump’s sin isn’t against a swim team, it’s against the rule of law.
Oh, and evidence strongly suggests Trump knew exactly what he was doing when he tried to get James Comey to drop the FBI’s investigation into Michael Flynn.
We keep hearing about past times Republicans confronted one of their own over his abuses. For instance:
Well, times—and political parties—change, that’s for sure.