President Trump during a media briefing Monday. (Jim Lo Scalzo-Pool/Getty Images)
BOSTON (WBZ-AM) -- The news that federal agents have raided the office and home of Michael Cohen, President Trump’s longtime lawyer and friend, and seized correspondence between the two men along with other documents, comes as no surprise.
New York real estate can be a dirty business, and from the federal lawsuit alleging racist rental practices by Trump and his father during the early 1970s up through the Trump University scandal, there’s plenty of evidence that unethical conduct was part of the Trump brand. And when you stock the upper echelons of your presidential campaign with the likes of Michael Flynn and Paul Manafort, it’s a sign of poor character.
But I also wasn’t surprised to see the following quote in the latest installment of Diane Hessan’s excellent series in the Globe about what Trump voters are thinking: “I think Trump lies daily,” says a guy named Kenny from Louisiana. “Do I think he has stuff in the closet that he doesn’t want out and may lie about? Yes. I couldn’t care less. He never preached he was a saint and then all of the sudden we found out he had horns. We all knew this and accepted it.”
This is a dangerous and disappointing – if not unfamiliar – form of rationalization.
We saw it in the 1970s when some Nixon supporters were persuaded to dismiss his criminal behavior as a plot by his enemies – until the truth became impossible to ignore.
And we saw it in the 1990s when Clinton sycophants – including some self-proclaimed feminists – gave him a pass on his predatory behavior.
If you don’t mind enabling corrupt behavior by people in power, that’s your choice I guess.
But remember what the Bible said: you reap what you sow.
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