Many Americans were relieved to see that prosecutors were finally implicating the President in actual crimes, rather than just his associates, when Robert Mueller’s team and the prosecutors from the Southern District of New York filed sentencing guidelines and court briefs over the weekend. The information that came with those documents was both revelatory and fiery: At last, Trump was implicated in not just crimes, but in two felony counts of campaign-related malfeasance.
But on Capitol Hill, the tone was different than on Main Street, USA.
While Democrats in the incoming majority of the House of Representatives floated once again the possibility that the President’s dealings amounted to impeachable offenses, even without a conviction and before the final report from Mueller — based solely on publicly-available evidence — Republicans still weren’t quite as sure whether (a) the President was actually guilty of anything and (b) whether they’re American enough to give a crap if he did.
Case in point: Orrin Hatch, the longest-serving Republican currently in the Senate and second-longest in history after the virulently racist Strom Thurmond, was contacted in the Senate hallway by CNN reporter Manu Raju, who asked him how he felt about Trump being implicated in felony campaign crimes. The responses that he gave explain almost everything about the Republicans’ stance toward the wrongdoings of the Trump administration — as long as they get what they want out of it, Trump could be a pimp in a purple velvet fedora (which I have no doubt Trump would wear if he were a pimp).
Hatch dismisses allegations of Trump crimes over hush money.
Asked if he had any concerns, Hatch said: “The Democrats will do anything to hurt this president.” Told it was alleged by SDNY, Hatch told me: “Okay but I don’t care; all I can say is he’s doing a good job as President”— Manu Raju (@mkraju) December 10, 2018
“He’s doing a good job” is a bit of a stretch for most of us, but the real problem is that the GOP keeps moving the goalposts: First there was no way he did anything wrong; then if he did do anything, he didn’t know it was wrong at the time; then if he did know, it wasn’t anything that Democrats hadn’t done before and probably worse; now they’re at the old “that stuff was all before he became President” stage of denials.
Yeah, like, a couple weeks before he became President. Try again, Senator.
Watch the exchange here:
Featured image via screen capture
