CNN's King: Republicans Want People to ‘Dramatically Lower the Bar’ for Presidency

June 8th, 2017 5:27 PM

After the much hyped James Comey Senate hearing Thursday, CNN’s John King took a shot at Republicans later that afternoon. He argued that they wanted to “dramatically lower the standard for being President of the United States.”

He then accused them of being hypocrites:

These are the same people, remember, who said Hillary Clinton couldn't be President of the United States because her conduct was beneath the dignity of the office. They are asking you today, politically, to lower the bar for acceptable conduct for the President. 

But issuing unconstitutional executive orders, signing a horrible nuclear deal with Iran, allowing the IRS to target political opponents, undermining a key ally, etc. were all examples of “acceptable conduct" for President Obama?

Hours earlier, King admitted that Comey’s remarks about Obama-era Attorney General Loretta Lynch wouldn’t fetch that much attention. 

Here’s the relevant transcript: 

CNN’s Wolf
June 8, 2017
1:57 p.m. Eastern

JOHN KING: I think it is very interesting to listen to the Republican argument today. They are not challenging what James Comey said. They are challenging some of his interpretations of what happened. That the president was just trying, you know Mike Flynn was his friend. He was just trying to say he's been fired, can you cut the guy some slack. So what they are saying is what the President did was improper maybe. It was icky. It was inappropriate but it wasn’t illegal. The Speaker of the House saying that Donald Trump is new at this. Lindsey Graham saying, you know, he's rude and he’s crude. He’s a bull in the China shop but that's not illegal. What they are asking, Wolf, actually is for you to dramatically lower the standard for being President of the United States, acceptable behavior for a president of the United States and these are the same people, remember, who said Hillary Clinton couldn't be President of the United States because her conduct was beneath the dignity of the office. They are asking you today, politically, to lower the bar for acceptable conduct for the president.