Granted, Trump’s public statements tend toward the erratic, and one can make too much of his perceived shifts. But the direction of these shifts aligned him better with what other Republicans were saying. According to Politico, Senator Kevin Cramer, Republican of North Dakota, urged Menendez not to resign. (In a closed-door session Thursday with Democrats, Menendez said he will not.) Senator Tommy Tuberville, Republican of Alabama, said Democrats wanted Menendez to resign only so that a Democratic New Jersey governor could replace him. Senator Marco Rubio, Republican of Florida, insinuated the same. House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, following a trajectory similar to Trump’s, said on Sunday that Menendez should resign, but two days later backtracked and said that was up to Menendez. Senator Tom Cotton, Republican of Arkansas, articulated the GOP line most clearly. He said that while the charges against him were “serious and troubling,” it was also true that “the Department of Justice has a troubling record of failure and corruption in cases against public figures, from Ted Stevens to Bob McDonnell to Donald Trump to Bob Menendez the last time around.” Note that he attached the word “corruption” to the Justice Department, not to Menendez.
News commentary on congressional Republicans’ muted response to Menendez’s legal troubles has mostly said that Republicans don’t want to criticize Menendez lest they invite criticism of Trump and his four indictments. What’s sauce for the goose, they fear, can be sauce for the gander. But that analysis presumes the Republicans are playing defense, which they aren’t.
The GOP is playing offense. Republicans have declared war on the FBI. They’ve created an entire Select Subcommittee of the House Judiciary Committee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government. That these efforts are hilariously incompetent doesn’t detract from the reality that congressional Republicans have joined Trump in seeking a wholesale delegitimization of the criminal justice system. It’s only a hop, skip and a jump to openly embracing political corruption, even when the crook is a Democrat. Don’t forget that it was Trump who commuted the prison sentence of Rod Blagojevich, the onetime Democratic governor of Illinois who hung a “For Sale” sign on a Senate vacancy. Trump demonstrated an affinity for criminals well before he entered politics. He is corrupt himself. It makes sense that he’s now positioning himself as an advocate for corruption, Republican and Democratic alike.