Just don't ask them to bake a cake for a gay couple

A reporter hadn’t even finished asking about President Trump and the sentencing of his former lawyer Michael Cohen when Republican Sen. James E. Risch indicated he would have none of it.

“Oh, I don’t do interviews on any of that stuff,” Risch said when questioned about Trump’s shifting explanations on efforts to buy the silence of women who claimed sexual dalliances with him.

Well, why not?

“I don’t do any interviews on anything to do with Trump and that sort of thing, okay?” Risch (Idaho) responded curtly before quickly slipping into the Senate chamber.

As Trump’s legal woes — rooted in special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s probe and the Southern District of New York’s investigation into the hush payments — continued to spiral this past week with new revelations and fresh presidential denials, congressional Republicans found themselves in a familiar position: struggling to account for Trump’s behavior and not-so-consistent statements about his personal controversies.

This week, Republicans responded to the latest chapter in Trump’s saga by rationalizing his actions of those of someone who didn’t know any better, carefully rebuking his Cohen-induced reactions while praising his policies, or putting full faith in his explanations — even as they’ve changed over time.

Or — as Risch showed — by not answering the question altogether.

“Oh, I don’t know anything about that,” Sen. Richard C. Shelby (R-Ala.) said, as a reporter tried to ask him about Trump denying that he directed Cohen to pay women in exchange for keeping quiet about their sexual encounters with the now-president. “I don’t know anything except what I hear and read about all that.”

“Stop,” Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa) said. “I have not heard what you told me he said. Until I read, actually read, what the president said, I won’t comment on it.”

“Honestly, I don’t think that’s a fair question,” said Sen. John Neely Kennedy (R-La.), when asked if he believed Trump’s explanation. “I wasn’t there. I don’t have any way of assessing that.”

[Cohen says Trump knew hush-money payments were wrong, contradicting his former boss]

Throughout his presidency, Trump has kept congressional Republicans on edge, throwing them off with a single tweet or surprise utterance at a news conference — be it on the legislative agenda, his executive decisions or the daily ups and downs of his chaotic administration.

But particularly regarding the legal matters, which continue to unfold by the day in both New York and Washington, many senior Republicans have learned the best answer is one that just tells everyone: wait. Be patient. Let Mueller’s team — as well as the other investigators — finish their job.

“Until we have a full picture, until the full evidence is presented by the Southern District or charges filed or that sort of thing, I just think it’s really hard to react or draw any hard and fast conclusions,” Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.), who will be the second-ranking Senate Republican come January, said in an interview this week.

Slightly chuckling, Thune continued: “I’m sure that he, again, coming out of his private life, sort of views this as not something that was done to impact or affect a campaign — that it’s something that he was trying to deal with in the way that he perhaps has dealt with those issues in the past.”

His fellow South Dakotan, Sen. Mike Rounds (R), was similarly gentle, acknowledging some sympathy for Trump wanting what he believes to be a private matter to be as obscured as possible.

“I think this president means very well. I think he has the best interests of our country at heart,” Rounds said. “Sometimes, I think many of us would probably approach and share messages in a different manner in which this president has.”

Does Rounds wish Trump would stop tweeting?

“I really wish he’d stop tweeting,” Rounds responded.

Indeed, Trump has been a veritable font of falsehoods, with dozens of his inaccurate claims spread through his Twitter account. As of Oct. 30, Trump has made 6,420 false or misleading claims since he took office, according to The Washington Post’s Fact Checker database.

Of those, 1,098 were delivered through Trump’s favorite social media platform.

[Meet the Bottomless Pinocchio, a new rating for a false claim repeated over and over again]

Despite that very spotty track record, Trump’s closest allies on Capitol Hill still have put their trust in him. In particular, they say Cohen — who was sentenced Wednesday to three years in prison for a litany of offenses, including lying — is an untrustworthy source.

When he was asked this week whether he believed Trump’s claims that he didn’t personally direct the hush-money payments, Sen. Orrin G. Hatch (R-Utah) responded: “I’ll accept his word.”

We are living through important times. I'm trying to document it, analyze it, keep my sense of humor and perspective even though it is anything but easy. And if you find what we do here to be helpful in understanding what's happening around us in this wild political era, if stopping by here from time to time gives you a little sense of solidarity with others who are going through their days as gobsmacked by events as you are, I hope you'll find it in your heart to drop a little something in the Hullabaloo stocking to help me keep the light on for another year so that Tom, Dennis, tristero and I can keep the lights on for another year.

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And I wish all of you Very Happy Hollandaise!

cheers --- digby

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