Many on the right have, in the wake of Donald Trump’s federal indictment, finally jumped ship. His supporters who remain, however, have raised a common refrain in his defense: But Hillary did it, too!
Before I go any further – yes, the Clintons were painfully and visibly corrupt, unrepentantly so, for decades. However, when Trump’s sycophants raise Hillary as a defense, they make an ironic admission. Trump’s advocates seem to say: Yes, our guy screwed up, but their guy screwed up, too, so our guy shouldn’t be punished. In this “justification” is an admission of guilt.
Whataboutism and lamentations of hypocrisy – even when warranted – are only ever heard from the losing side. If the only defense you can muster for your candidate is that someone else did something similarly bad – someone who has been irrelevant for almost seven years – you are losing.
The Hillary Clinton argument
This irony is lost on the Trump acolytes. So many Republicans made Hillary’s corruption central to their argument against her in 2016. Now, those same voices that derided Clinton as too corrupt to serve are tacitly admitting that Trump is just as bad.
The email scandal and Trump’s current ordeal are an alluring comparison, as both contend with misuse of classified information. Hillary’s private email server, for those who don’t remember last decade’s political intrigue, might have contained classified documents. The difference – Clinton email specifics aside – is that Trump seems to have refused repeated requests to return the documents.
But, they say, former President Trump had the authority to declassify documents and bring them home, whereas former Secretary of State Clinton – who never served as president – did not. Putting aside the inconvenient fact that Trump allegedly admitted that he did not declassify the documents, this distinction is lost on anyone who does not spend their life on Twitter.
The Clintons, for all their petty and grand corruption, never made it easy for the authorities to hold them accountable. Even if there was appetite to prosecute prominent liberals, the Clintons were never as brazen as Trump.
The difference between Trump and the Clintons
Case in point, the June 8 indictment accuses Trump of cartoonishly showing off classified information while commenting that he shouldn’t be showing it off. If Clinton ever admitted guilt for the email server debacle, it was never as blatant as Trump’s showmanship.
More to the point, Trump could have avoided this nightmare by turning over the documents when asked by the DOJ.
Republican whataboutism becomes ever more tiresome as Trump repeatedly makes fools of his defenders and prophets of his detractors. The left in this country so rarely embarrasses itself while Trump is more than happy to burn anyone on the right – even his former surrogates – to save himself.
Before the indictment was released, many voices from the right preordained the DOJ probe as baseless hackery. So intent to decry a double standard, some Republicans leaped to Trump’s defense before seeing any hard evidence – discrediting themselves when the indictment proved, in the words of former Attorney General Bill Barr, “damning.”
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Even after the indictment was released, some Trump defenders still attempted to do the impossible and pass the indefensible as routine, even if it meant contradicting themselves from seven years ago. Some conservatives seem intent to twist themselves into rhetorical pretzels explaining why Hillary’s scandals were different or worse to an increasingly weary audience.
Hillary was actually investigated
Conservative proclamations of “what if the roles were reversed” are hardly unique to politics. Whenever a celebrity makes questionable comments about Christians or white people, the same response always abounds.
To my fellow conservatives: Yes, there is a double standard. Impotently complaining about hypocrisy does nothing.
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The DOJ will not decide to charge your political enemies just because you call the prosecutors hypocrites. Serious change requires winning elections, which necessitates a compelling message to voters. “Hillary did it, too” is not a viable campaign slogan.
Not incidentally, Hillary was investigated numerous times by the DOJ, FBI and the Republican-controlled Congress. Hillary was never indicted and arrested, as Trump is now, but the scandal might have ended her presidential campaign.
There might be substantive defenses for Trump’s actions, but protesting that Hillary Clinton is worse or complaining about Hunter Biden is an unconvincing tactic.
Even if these grievances are deserved, conservatives should aspire to be better than the corruption of the other side rather than using their vices as a defense.
Rodge Reschini, a summer intern with USA TODAY Opinion, is a rising senior at Cornell University. He’s the editor-in-chief of the Cornell Review. Follow him on Twitter:@r_reschini
