Congressional Republicans seeking to find some way to defend Donald Trump against a scathing federal indictment are engaging in a strategy that should be a game … except that it isn’t.
No way! Given the stakes involved, the GOP version of “what-about-ism” is ringing as hollow as a ripe watermelon.
I watched Sen. Lindsey Graham, the king of the Senate Trumpkins, fire back at ABC News’s George Stephanopoulos who sought simply to ask him whether he thinks Trump “did anything wrong.”
I’ll back up for a brief moment. The feds have indicted Trump on 37 counts involving the theft of classified documents from the White House. Special counsel Jack Smith announced the indictments involve obstruction of justice, violations of the Espionage Act and abuse of public office.
Graham sought this morning to compare Trump’s alleged crimes to Hillary Clinton’s use of personal email servers during her time as secretary of state. He said repeatedly that “nothing happened” to Clinton. Wrong! She was investigated thoroughly by the FBI, which determined she committed no crime.
That wasn’t good enough for Graham, who also said President Biden and former Vice President Mike Pence also had documents in their homes … just like Trump! No comparison.
The president and the former VP turned those documents over immediately to the feds, who then filed them with the National Archives.
Trump did nothing of the sort. The indictment states that Trump hid the documents from the FBI and instructed others to do the same thing. That, as you Americans would say, is “obstruction of justice.”
When I hear Republican suck-ups like Graham throw out the “What about the other guy?” response as a defense tactic for their own guy, I am left only to call it what it is.
Deflection.
They want to change the focus from their ally to their foes. It’s a phony dodge.