Editorial: GOP is outraged at Cohen's lies but gives President Trump a pass

Michael Cohen, a lawyer and the president’s “fixer,” testified Wednesday before the U.S. House of Representatives Oversight and Reform Committee to acknowledge his lies and offer up (with corroborating documentation) what he contended was a more truthful portrait of Trump and his actions.

Republicans on the committee – including North Carolina’s Virginia Foxx and Mark Meadows – focused exclusively on attacking Cohen’s credibility. The tactic was certainly understandable. Their tolerance of Trump’s constant falsehoods – averaging 13 a day since he’s been in office – left them little choice. They made no effort to defend Trump’s credibility or veracity. They know they were defenseless.

But it backfired. Meadow’s theatrics in particular emerged as news just as big – and another embarrassment to North Carolina politics – than Cohen’s testimony.

Meadows, one of Trump’s most reflexive defenders finds himself along with Cohen, a not-so-flattering focal point.

At one point silently standing behind Meadows was Lynne Patton, a black woman who’s worked for the Trump family and now in the White House. Meadows demanded that her statement vouching that Trump was not a racist, be made part of the committee record.

Why do Trump loyalists allow themselves to: be sacrificed at his excesses; tolerate his unrelenting deceit and lies; look the other way as he cozies-up to foreign dictators like Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong-un while ignoring U.S. intelligence agencies?

Does Trump get a pass for his serial dishonesty because he:

Meadows, Foxx, others in North Carolina’s congressional delegation and the others in Congress should demand that our president ALWAYS tells the nation the truth and ALWAYS works in the best interest of all Americans not just his self-interest.

Tolerating – even benefitting -- Trump’s lies and deceits isn’t absolution, it is abdication. History won’t remember Meadows, Foxx and the others for the fleeting decisions of courts. It is their partnership in dishonesty that will be recorded for posterity.