About a year ago I wrote a post that could have been titled A Meta-Defense of Brett Kavanaugh, in that it made essentially the same argument I want to make here: allowing normal Constitutional processes to be distorted by unfounded and ambiguous accusations of wrongdoing is the same as surrendering those processes, and hence Constitutional governance, to the angriest voices in the least responsible mob.

Regardless of what one thinks of President Trump, it is a fact that he was elected President in 2016, and that no credible evidence has been presented that his election, however unexpected, was in any way irregular.

What has occurred since his inauguration, however, has been highly irregular. He spent two years being subjected to the outlandish yet apparently coordinated accusation of being a Russian stooge, a Russian agent, a Russian spy, and a traitor – accusations hurled from essentially every press and media spokesperson, many in Congress, and even some high-ranking Obama-era officials left inside his administration.

He was made the target of a special criminal investigation based on documents leaked by the head of the FBI – an investigation that ultimately found no basis for the accusations of Russian collusion but that nonetheless attempted to establish a predicate for his removal from office without actually committing itself to identifying specific and actionable wrongdoing: “we can’t prove anything, but we can’t disprove anything, either,” is essentially what it said.

Through a virtual carpet-bombing of hostile coverage, numerous unsubstantiated claims against him have entered the public consciousness as established wisdom: he’s a Russian agent, a misogynist, a racist, a lawless president, an ultra-Conservative monster – most outrageously, he’s accused daily of committing unspecified but nonetheless mortal injury to the democratic process itself. Such charges are notably devoid of specifics; when essentially all organs of the opinion-shaping media and institutional elite concur, the (political) science is settled.

President Trump is a very imperfect man. He is, however, the elected President, and his election was legitimate. His opposition inside and outside of government has consistently sought to prevent, then delegitimize, and ultimately to end his administration, using everything from likely criminal abuse of the intelligence apparatus to a sustained campaign of disinformation and subversion from within the administration itself.

Make his challengers speak honestly and precisely, and make them prove their charges. Make them acknowledge their errors as well. Whatever one thinks of President Trump, surrendering him to the mob sets a precedent that endangers the normal order of electoral politics.