Gabriel Schoenfeld, writing in USA Today, excoriates the president for undermining the rule of law and criticizes his allies and supporters for abetting him.
Where are House Speaker Paul Ryan, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and Sen. Chuck Grassley, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee? Where are they as the rule of law is subverted, as ongoing criminal cases are publicly prejudged by the president, as the attorney general is demeaned by the president for following recusal rules, as the FBI is baselessly attacked, as sterling law-enforcement men such as James Comey and Robert Mueller are smeared while Roy Cohn, one of the worst scoundrels ever to pass the bar, is posthumously rehabilitated by the president? Deafening silence from them all.
But the Republican majority in Congress has done worse than turn a blind eye to gross irregularities. Keeping silent about appalling transgressions at the Justice Department, they are voluble about invented ones. The entirely ginned up set of accusations against Deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe is one case in point. The criminal referral by Grassley and Sen. Lindsey Graham against Christopher Steele, the author of the “Trump dossier,” is another on a list too lengthy to include here.
I agree with some of this—the president should not be commenting on pending trials, for example—but not with most of it. I have no idea whether the criminal referral of Steele is for an “invented” transgression, and neither does Schoenfeld. If the senators uncovered evidence that the man lied to the FBI, they were right to make the referral.
Anyway, Schoenfeld continues:
But Republicans have evidently mastered the art of the Faustian deal. If the president gives them what they want, they will support him come what may, ignoring his trespasses on custom, decency and law.
“Donald Trump deserves thunderous acclaim from conservatives for his outstanding record of judicial appointments during his first year as president,” writes Ed Whelan at National Review, without devoting so much as a syllable to the assault on justice being carried out by a president who has dragged his career of grifting into the White House.
Well, since Whelan’s article was expressly about Trump’s judicial appointments, it is not especially surprising that he did not comment on other topics. Should Whelan have included a disclaimer saying that praise for the president’s judicial appointments is not to be construed as agreement with everything he has said about the Russia investigation? Or as support for his frequent dishonesty? At some point we have to count on our readers to be able to make elementary distinctions, even if some of them fail to do so.