On Wednesday morning, President Trump tweeted out his most important offense to accusations about Donald Trump Jr. attempting to collude with the Russian government.

Hey, but Hillary. He tweeted, why aren't the same standards placed on the Democrats?

Look what Hillary Clinton may have gotten away with. Disgraceful. This has become the all-purpose alibi for Republican malfeasance.

Some call it what aboutism. What about Hillary Clinton? What about the media? What about Bill Clinton or Teddy Kennedy? There's a raging debate on the right about the nature of this defense. Is it just excuse making for bad behavior? Or is it a legitimate reminder that politics is a dirty game and that we don't choose the rules of engagement? This morning, Byron York of the Washington Examiner, explained. Another word for what aboutism is precedent. This seems kind of inadequate. What about ism actually takes three basic forms.

Some of the music. examiner explained. Another word for what aboutism is precedent. This seems kind of inadequate.

What aboutism actually takes three basic forms, some of them useful, some of them counterproductive.

Let's run through them. First, reminders of leftist dishonesty. When Trump tweets out that Hillary

Clinton may have gotten away with bad behavior, he's at least partially reminding the media

and the Democrats that they were fine with Hillary's bad behavior. When conservatives spent much of yesterday reminding the media that Barack Obama pledged

flexibility to the Russians in exchange for them backing off their aggression in the final days of the

2012 election, they were doing so in order to point out the media's obvious leftist bias. That's

important and it's worthwhile, but it should be made explicit. Second, what aboutism can be a

reminder of proportionality. Sometimes what aboutism takes the form of reminding people that something

isn't that big a deal. seemingly, the entire left went ballistic this week when it first heard

about a house rule that forbade bare arms in the Capitol. The right promptly recommended, reminded

the left, that this rule existed under Nancy Pelosi, too.

It wasn't a big deal then. It's not a big deal now. Third, moral relativism. Now, this is the dangerous form of what aboutism. It's also the most common. This is the actual message underlying Trump's tweet. Hillary got away with it, so why shouldn't I be able to get away with it? This ignores two crucial facts.

First, Hillary did not get away with it.

She lost the election.

It's why she's not in the White House. Second, wrong is wrong. The right now engages in a fantasy, whereby the left's dishonesty somehow justifies conservative dishonesty. Hey, if Hillary's corrupt, what's the big problem with the Trump campaign soliciting information from the Russian government.

In this case, what aboutism is itself dishonesty? It's pretending to care about the sins of the left in order to justify the sins of the right. It actually throws into sharp relief the hypocrisy

of the right. We complained endlessly and justifiably about Loretta Lynch meeting secretly

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