Queue blanket "the fact that you disagree with me politically means it's impossible for me to commit a crime ever" defense. It's like a competition between how many times Trump's clown car can use that defense and how many times Republicans in Congress can vote no on legislation
It's a repeating cycle, which is what worries me about the partisan news channels, social media and the current partisan war we're in.
The more crimes Trump is facing, the more it "proves" to the cult that its a pile-on. They will never see it as the crimes catching up to him.
It's the same with election integrity - if/when republicans install corrupt cronies in place to toss out voter registrations, ballots or use legal wrangling to overturn the will of voters, democrats will rightly cry foul, and then republicans will retort with "Oh, so NOW you care about election fraud and integrity!? I thought widespread fraud didn't exist? Relax!"
It's a self-fulfilling prophecy at this point. I'm not sure how to combat it at this point besides continuing to tell the truth and hold criminals accountable. I'm not sure what the republicans end game is here... if "Obama judges" can't rule over Trump's cases, if "Hillary supporters" or democrats can't preside over republican cases, if you can't arrest, indict or otherwise hold accountable people in a party "before an election" (when we have elections every two damn years), if any action taken against any politician or anyone associated with a politician is "political", then what? Hell, Trump even said a hispanic judge couldn't fairly preside over his case.
They make the rules up as they go and so far, they've done a good job of convincing many Americans that's the case. We used to have a certain threshold that you would cross and that would be it; you would lose the support of your party. You'd take the bruising your rogue colleague caused, convince them to resign or whatever, and then move on. Not so with Trump or anyone affiliated with him.
That's why Bannon is tethering himself to Trump so strongly; he wants to be perceived as political collateral by proxy, which is not the case. If this was all political from the start, why was it Trump's own DoJ who went after Flynn, Stone, Manafort and other Trump associates? It's a question they can't answer and won't answer, so they just resort to "the whole DoJ is corrupt" and making it out be a big target against republicans. Everyone is in on it - from election volunteers in podunk counties, to judges that don't grant them their every wish, to the DoJ, every member of the opposing party in congress, AGs and prosecutors across the country...
It's really tiring.
abcnews.go.com
