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The Trump White House crossed a new threshold for political debasement this week
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2018/05/12/the-trump-white-house-crossed-a-new-threshold-for-political-debasement-this-week/The Trump White House crossed a new threshold for political debasement this week
by Aaron Blake | May 12 at 6:30 AM
The White House probably thinks it cannot punish Kelly Sadler for her awful comment about John McCain because President Trump has also said nasty things about McCain. It may worry that showing her the door would set a troubling precedent for a president who may one day cross a very similar line.
Welcome to the ongoing degradation of our political discourse. Destination: No end in sight.
One mainstay of the Trump era is reporters are constantly wary of overselling the salience of the political moment. We have seen Trump cross so many established lines of acceptable political behavior and rhetoric, and the outrage cycle can feel futile and even perfunctory. Whether it is Trump's goal to bulldoze our political norms or not, it is happening with an almost unflinching steadiness.
It is worth recording just where we are when key thresholds are crossed. What happened this week is worse than most anything we have seen — worse even, I would argue, than Trump questioning McCain's war hero status. What's more, the White House is trying to simply brush it under the rug, which means the bulldozer is pressing forward.
6 replies
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= new reply since forum marked as read
while I appreciate the work of the Washington post, he and his cabinet have done much worse. 
