While there was, put kindly, a fair amount of dysfunction in the Trump administration, there was also a fair amount of unnecessary pearl-clutching from Trump’s opponents. General James Mattis’ nomination for Secretary of Defense led to horrified claims Trump was militarizing the Cabinet (such claims failed to materialize upon President Biden’s nomination of General Lloyd Austin to the post). Democrats held Trump accountable for rousting protesters from Lafayette Park protesters even though it was easily verifiable the city had had plans to clear the park for some time. Perhaps most (least?) impressive was Rep. Adam Schiff continually promising he had “more than circumstantial evidence” of Trump colluding with Russia, though he never actually provided it. As recently as last Sunday, Schiff was still defending his position.

None of this remotely vindicates Trump’s behavior — if he hadn’t already disqualified himself as president before January 6, he certainly did it on January 6. But it does numb many to Trump’s misdeeds, meaning he often dodged responsibility from his base for even his most egregious actions. As Jonathan Tobin notes today in Newsweek, he hopes Trump’s latest egregious action (dinner with two avowed anti-Semites) will draw deserved condemnation from that base. While spurious charges of anti-Semitism have been lobbed against Trump in the past, that shouldn’t immunize him from this one, especially since he’s so far refused to apologize for the dinner and the most he’s said about Nick Fuentes (a very publicly vile individual) is that he didn’t know him. With Trump dodging responsibility yet again, it’s left to his base to hold him accountable. If they don’t, they give credence to attacks from the left that, until now, they’d been in a better position to dismiss.