But his clogged toilets!

What do you have to do to catch some public hell if your name is Donald Trump, huh? The New York Times headlined a story this morning that “Trump is said to have taken possible classified material with him” when he left the White House.  Take a guess where that story appeared.

Page 15.

But let’s see what the Times did when the name was Hillary Clinton and the story involved her “emails.”

That’s the Times front page on October 28, 2016, just eleven days before the election when she was running against Trump.  The paper devoted not one, but three “above the fold” stories to yet another “controversy” about Hillary Clinton’s emails.  The next day, the Times would play two “above the fold” stories about her emails on the front page.  This was the big one: “New Emails Jolt Clinton Campaign In Race’s Last Days; FBI Looks at Messages Found During Inquiry.”  Naturally, the paper gave Trump a shot at her: “With 11 Days to Go, Trump Says Revelation ‘Changes Everything.’”  That ran on the front page, too.

There was no big “revelation.”  The emails were not “new.”  The “messages” turned out to be on Anthony Weiner’s laptop and were uncovered during an FBI investigation of his “sexting” scandal. The whole thing was set off when former FBI Director James Comey sent a letter to Congress that the new emails had been discovered and would be the subject of a new FBI investigation.  Eight days later, Comey informed the Congress the whole thing was over, there would be no charges against Hillary or anyone else, the FBI was dropping the investigation.  This was the second time Comey had exonerated Clinton over her “emails.” It generated days stories about a scandal that turned out to be about nothing, but it delivered the words “Clinton,” “emails,” “FBI,” and “investigation” to Trump in a pitch right over the center of the plate.  He proceeded to knock it out of the park: “Hillary Clinton is guilty. She knows it, the FBI knows it, the people know it, and now it’s up to the American people to deliver justice at the ballot box on November 8.” In less than two weeks, Hillary went from being six points ahead in swing states, to leading by three points to narrowly losing all of them.

Back in the real world of today where there was a real insurrection and a real attempt to overturn an election with a real coup, we are learning that not only did Trump regularly break the law by ripping up official documents in violation of the Official Records Act right there in the Oval Office, he took 15 boxes of documents and gifts and letters to Mar a Lago with him when he left the White House.  Then we’re told – on page 15 – that some of those documents were classified. And now we find out from a leak to Axios from Maggie Haberman’s new book on Trump, “Conman,” that maids were constantly having to unplug toilets in the official White House residence because they were stopped up with shredded documents.

Oh, they’re making noises about the National Archives “referring” the matter to the Department of Justice.  But where are the headlines about FBI investigations of all this lawbreaking?  Where are the headlines with quotes from prominent Democrats to the effect that “this changes everything?”

I’ll tell you where they are.  They’re nowhere. If a woman, most especially a woman who is a Democrat, shows up and her makeup is smeared or her hair color has changed or her skirt is too short, there are headlines galore.  But if a man rips up classified documents and throws them down the toilet or loads them in a truck and removes them from the White House, you can’t hear yourself think above the din of yawns from the media.

While all of this is going on, the 1/6 Select Committee has subpoenaed Peter Navarro to ask him why he participated in planning for a coup against the United States government…and then went on MSNBC and admitted the whole thing.  And now we’re learning that the committee has found gaps – read:  deletions – from White House call logs during “critical hours” on January 6 when the insurrection was going on.  And we are discovering that Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani actually figured out a way to physically seize some voting machines from a county in Michigan while making preparations to file phony slates of electors to muck up the certification of ballots that would take place on January 6 in a joint session of Congress – in conjunction with Peter Navarro. 

What are we going to find out when we wake up tomorrow?  What could possibly be left?  We’ve crossed every red line and broken through every guard rail that previously marked the boundaries of what was politically and legally acceptable in this country.  I mean, I thought national security secrets used to be a pretty big deal!  Republicans started seven separate investigations and held countless hearings and spent months investigating Hillary Clinton and grilled her at a hearing for 11 hours because four Americans lost their lives in Benghazi…and found she did nothing wrong.

The story about Donald Trump and his ripping up of official documents and removing and mishandling secret documents has touched on every single thing Hillary Clinton was ever accused of in the so-called scandals about her emails.  Trump advisers like his son-in-law Jared Kushner and his daughter Ivanka and his chief of staff Mark Meadows even used private email to conduct official business.

When are the rules going to apply to Republicans in the same way they have applied to Democrats?  When is one of these Republican criminals going to be held accountable?  When are we going to see one Republican criminal answering questions under oath?  When are we going to see one Republican criminal in handcuffs?  When are we going to see one of these arrogant lawbreakers face a jury for his crimes?