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Scott Sumner put the problem with Trump well:

“With Trump there are two types of people, those who see the elephant in the room, and those that cannot see it.  Almost every day there is a new Trump outrage.  When it occurs, some people dig up some sort of similar event with one of America’s previous 44 presidents.  They fail to see the pattern here, the uniquely outrageous nature of Trump.  It’s like a dot picture of an elephant:

“Some people see the elephant, while others just see a bunch of individual dots–none of which look like an elephant.”

“None of Trump’s individual outrages make him look particularly awful.  It’s the daily drumbeat that paints the true picture.  You either see it or you don’t.  For those who cannot, I can’t help you.”

“Interestingly, America’s white nationalists do see the picture accurately.  They get it.  They see how all the points fit together.  That’s why they love Trump.”

He uses the analogy of a dotted elephant rather than a forest but his point is well taken. Trump can be defended only to the extent that you judge each new outrage in a vacuum without reference to the previous 10 outrages. Only without any context can each new outrage be dismissed. Like this morning there are headlines about how Manafort continued to speak to his ‘man in Kiev’, Konstantin Kilimnik-a suspected Russian agent-during the Mueller investigation even after being indicted despite many warnings by friends and confidants. 

“Former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort ignored the advice of his allies and continued to talk to a Russian associate even after he was indicted by special counsel Robert Mueller, The New York Times reported late Friday.”

“Manafort and Konstantin Kilimnik traded emails throughout the 2016 presidential campaign — even appearing to discuss the financial benefit Manafort’s high level position could bring, according to the report.”

“Manafort reportedly continued to communicate with the trusted associate after first being indicted in October 2017 for money laundering.”

“Allies of Manafort urged him to cut off communication with Kilimnik, also known as “KK,” The Times reported. They reportedly argued that Kilimnik’s communications could be bugged and that he is not discreet or tactful.”

“Kilimnik, a Russian Army-trained linguist, was Manafort’s right-hand man for more than a decade and ran the Kiev office of Manafort’s political consulting company, Davis Manafort Partners International.”

“KK is one of the best interpreter and translators,” Philip Griffin, a longtime business partner of Manafort’s in Ukraine who hired Kilimnik in 1995, told the Times. “On everything else, he is a dumbass.”

This is a bombshell but we are in the era of Trump’s illegitimate reign-everyday has about 20 different bombshells on this level. It is easy in this environment to become desensitized, to fail to see the forest-or the dotted elephant-for the trees-or dots.

One way to avoid this is to try this thought experiment:  ask what would they say if this were Hillary Clinton?’And right away we again see that despite the complains of the Trump apologists, Trump doesn’t get such harsh treatment. I mean even now, through it all, he still gets the benefit of the doubt. Regarding Manafort you often hear ‘yeah, but maybe Trump just didn’t know and a lot of this is just stuff Manafort did years before he was Trump’s manager.’

Hillary would never get such benefit of the doubt. No one would be inclined to believe she didn’t know and even if she didn’t know that would be seen as almost as bad-what incompetence! She didn’t know. She should have known. If she didn’t know this would just prove she’s not up to the job-maybe that’s why we haven’t yet had a female POTUS! But of course she did know. And the fact that her campaign manager accused of conspiracy against the United States committed many of his crimes before she hired him-that would not be seen as exculpatory. The question would beg: why did she hire him in the first place then. She didn’t know about his record? To learn about it all you had to do was Google. 

That’s what they would say if this same headline happened even once during a Clinton Presidency. Just this alone would be enough for many to believe she should be impeached. So that’s one way to protect against missing the forest for the trees-ask what they’d say about Hillary if even one tree looked like this in her forest.

Back to the Hill: