Today's New Trump Scandal

I don't think I know the language well enough to do it but I think someone should write the article that a right-wing pundit would write and the speech that a right-wing political office holder or candidate would write if it had turned out that Bill Clinton or Barack Obama had paid off porn stars to keep a relationship secret.

No, let me amend that last part: "…if it had turned out that there was this much evidence that Bill Clinton or Barack Obama had paid off porn stars to keep a relationship secret." It wouldn't have to proven without a scintilla of doubt for that article to be written or that speech to be given. Take the reports about Trump and porn stars, replace Trump's name with Clinton's or Obama's and tell us what Sean Hannity would have said.

I won't write it and I won't run it here but if someone does write it, I'll link to it.

Also, it turns out that the online news site Slate had this story about Trump and one of the porn ladies pretty much nailed down a few weeks before the election. They never ran it because they didn't have it absolutely nailed down but it's out now because The Wall Street Journal believed it had sufficient verification.

Slate is thought of as a largely left-wing site, though on most days you can point to an article or two there from the other side of the street. Right now, there are probably folks praising them for having high-enough standards that they didn't run it because it didn't yet meet a high-enough bar of proof. And there are probably folks out there vilifying them for sitting on a story that was a lot more verified than most of what was being hurled then at Hillary Clinton. Could it have swung the election the other way?

Maybe. I don't know how I feel about this. It's the old argument over whether it's foolish to play fair when your opponent is cheating and stands to get away with it.

While we all ponder that, let's watch as some Republican leaders express tepid outrage. It'll be wrong but not wrong enough to stop supporting a Republican president. The rest of them will probably try to pretend it never happened. I like the ones who try the ol' Climate Change Dodge. They'll say, "I'm going to reserve judgment until all the facts are in" and then they'll never agree that all the facts are in.