“This reads like the president talks,” Sen. James Lankford, R-Okla., said in response to former FBI Director James Comey’s written testimony about his interactions with President Trump. “It sounds like a guy who is not a Washington guy.”

Lankford’s comments are emblematic of a certain line of defense of Trump’s actions, dating back to the Republican primaries, that hold Trump to a lower standard of propriety by virtue of the fact that he has a history of saying bizarre things and behaving in an outrageous manner.

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