The Teflon Don

 John Gotti was known as the Teflon Don for his ability to beat charges in court. Donald Trump - a man who openly admires mafioso - is Teflon Don for his ability to weather scandals that sink normal politicians. He is by far the most corrupt person to ever sit in the White House and second place isn't really close. Nixon was a criminal, but he was not so much interested in enriching himself as he was in his paranoid attempts to retain power. 

The best comparison is this: Nixon leveraged China's fractured relations with the Soviet Union to drive a wedge between them and open up better relations with China to help end the Vietnam war (albeit far too late and at far too high a cost). Trump simply sold them access via his hotels. Nixon hated the Soviet Union, Trump is a dupe for Putin.

The expression "Every allegation is a confession" came to my attention early in Trump's political career. If Trump says that Democrats are a bunch of pedophiles, it seems like it's a pretty good bet that Trump committed statutory rape on Epstein's island. 

As Chait notes, the House GOP is working to impeach Biden for accepting money from China through his brother and son. This is rank nonsense. Meanwhile, Trump is on the record as receiving millions from China while president.

One problem - and this predates Trump by years - is that we have asymmetric parties, in the sense that one party has a normal shame response and the other doesn't. Al Franken was right to resign. There are dozens of GOP lawmakers in DC alone who should resign, too. Claudine Gay was forced out as president of Harvard over a fairly minor but still real plagiarism scandal; Neil Gorsuch has committed much worse. Don't even get started on Clarence Thomas.

One of the debilitating features of Trumpistan is that there is no credible reason for Trump to be leading the GOP nominating field, given his disastrous handling of the pandemic, his 91 criminal indictments, his confessed sexual crimes, his open acceptance of bribes, his tax evasion, his...it goes on and on. There are plenty of other cruel, mendacious assholes in the GOP, why not pick another one?