False equivalence?

Julie Kelly writes at American Greatness about how #Never Trumpers such as Jonah Goldberg are ecstatic about Stormy Daniels.

Since mid-January, Goldberg has written about Daniels several times; he has devoted three columns to her in just the past three days. In Jonah’s mind, Daniels is the hero and Trump is the villain: “But the only person who seems to have really figured out how to navigate through it all with her head held high [emphasis added] starred in such classic films as The Witches of Breastwick, Porking with Pride 2, and Trailer Trash Nurses 6.” A woman who previously insisted the tryst with Trump did not happen, and now is capitalizing on her newfound fame by selling $14.99 memberships to her website, is the noble character in Goldberg’s role-playing fantasy. And he knows her movies. Gross.

Similar to his needling Republican voters who supported Roy Moore, Goldberg is demanding a full-throated repudiation by every Trump voter for his alleged Stormy rendezvous. If you don’t condemn it, you condone it, according to Goldberg’s Rules. After Daniels’ 60 Minutes interview, Goldberg doubled-down on his faux comparisons between Trump’s dalliances and the egregious history of sexual misconduct by Democratic politicians:

“Someone needs to explain to these guys that if you made a big deal about Democratic sexual impropriety and don’t about Republican sexual impropriety, you’re just as hypocritical as the liberals who didn’t make a big deal about Democrats’ misbehavior but do about Republicans’.”

This is a classic example of false equivalence, as if the behavior of Bill Clinton or Anthony Weiner or Ted Kennedy or any number of randy Democratic politicians is similar to what Trump purportedly did as a private citizen in a hotel room during George W. Bush’s second term. And the “big deal” is that these politicians leveraged their power and position while serving in elected office to seduce, harass, exploit, and assault women.

Read more here.