Lock (Him) Up, Lock (Him) Up

by Deacon Blues

Cue the months of hyperventilated media coverage over this disqualifying action (snark):

Presidential son-in-law and senior adviser Jared Kushner has corresponded with other administration officials about White House matters through a private email account set up during the transition last December, part of a larger pattern of Trump administration aides using personal email accounts for government business.

Kushner uses his private account alongside his official White House email account, sometimes trading emails with senior White House officials, outside advisers and others about media coverage, event planning and other subjects, according to four people familiar with the correspondence. POLITICO has seen and verified about two dozen emails.

[snip]

The decision to set up new, private accounts as Kushner was preparing to enter the White House came in the wake of a bitter election campaign in which Trump routinely excoriated his Democratic rival Hillary Clinton for using a personal email account to handle government business when she was secretary of state.

[snip]

People familiar with the account say it was primarily set up for Kushner’s personal communications, but he has used it to communicate with acquaintances outside the White House about matters relating to Trump and the administration, according to people who have received messages, as well as with his White House colleagues.

When Obama’s (former) Secretary of State was revealed to have used a private email account while on the government’s business, the national media covered it breathlessly day in and day out.

Now that Trump’s de facto Secretary of State has been revealed to have used a private email account after the election and while serving inside the White House, and after he was revealed to have wanted a secret backchannel communications link to a hostile foreign power, how many months (days, weeks, hours, nanoseconds) will there be the same level of attention by the media? How many daily press briefings will Sarah Huckabee Sanders be forced to justify why Jared Kushner’s efforts are different than the days when her boss called for Crooked Hillary to be locked up?

I’m guessing the national media will wimp out on this one and chase another squirrel in about a day or so.

This and other outrages of late, like Trump's attacks against black athletes for not standing during the national anthem, from a chicken-hawk who deferred his way out of Vietnam service due to phony injuries are by themselves examples of disqualifying behavior. But to his base, when Trump or his family and supporters do the same things for which they blasted Hillary, all is AOK. Why? Because our country has devolved into tribes, where what you do is wrong and what my tribe does is acceptable. And as a result, until the media doggedly calls out such rampant hypocrisy, we are destined for a slow slide into banana republic status.