What if and the rule of law

In a recent Washington Post column by Nicolas Kristof, he posed a question that went like this: What if your high school’s principal allowed the police chief’s average-achieving son into advanced placement classes in exchange for an investigation of the principal’s wife to help him in his divorce proceedings? If that happened, we would want them both fired.

What if President Obama was rightly accused of bribing a businessman in Canada back in 2012 to get dirt on Romney? My bet is the Democrats and the Republicans would have wanted him impeached.

What if the coaches of our beloved Gonzaga Bulldogs men’s basketball team had cheated to get top recruits, paying monetary favors to the parents? We would be shocked and saddened, but head coaches Mark Few and Tommy Lloyd, recruiter, would have to be fired.

So, why do those people who seem almost drunk on Trump, continue to defend him even though, in his own words, Trump admitted to bribing the Ukraine president for dirt on a personal political rival? Why do Trump supporters refuse to hear the 17 Trump administration officials who testified to the president’s guilt? Why do Senate Republicans shrug their shoulders and say, “So, what if he did it?” and “No, we will not allow direct witness testimony?”

What do Trump’s supporters and Trump’s Senate and Justice Department not understand how obstructing Congress completely is a quick slide into the kind of monarchial and autocratic nations like those of Saudi Arabia and of Trump’s favorite dictator Putin? Shrug at the rule of law and it’s game over for us.

STEPHEN DRINKARD

Sandpoint