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Those who’ve followed Prager’s work over the years likely grasp why his commentary triggered questions about whether he has abandoned his principles. Many of his past positions seem irreconcilable with supporting Donald Trump.

Here’s a rundown for the uninitiated.

Profanity

The most straightforward example: his 2011 column, “F-Word Laced Speech Disqualifies Donald Trump From Presidency,” where Prager declared that Trump’s public utterances of profane words “render him unfit to be a presidential candidate, let alone president,” especially because, “and this IS important, he used it once and, upon seeing the enthusiastic reaction, felt encouraged to use it again and again.”

As Prager put it then, “leading Republicans need to announce that there is no place in the Republican Party for profane public speech. You cannot stand for small government without standing for big people.”

He went on to suggest larger stakes.

“The audience's reaction is even more important — and more distressing — than Trump's use of the word,” he explained. “Had there been booing, or had someone who invited him arisen to ask that he not use such language … the good name of the Republican Party and of conservative values would have been preserved. But if Republican women … find the F-word used by a potential candidate for president of the United States amusing, America is more coarsened than I had imagined.”

He concluded with the rhetorical question, “If we cannot count on Republicans and conservatives to maintain standards of public decency and civility, to whom shall we look?” Another time, he wrote that liberals who think that public cursing by politicians is no big deal illuminate “the massive values-differences between the Left and the Right … We who are not on the Left think public cursing is a big deal, because we believe that people can pollute their soul, their character, and, yes, their society, just as they can pollute their rivers and their air and their lungs.”

Today, Prager is encouraging a vote for the very man he deemed unfit in 2011, who has since engaged in more public, unapologetic profanity than any other candidate. By his own argument, he is elevating a man who will morally pollute our society.

Adultery

Prager has always taken a nuanced position on adultery, arguing that it doesn’t always disqualify someone from a position of leadership––the circumstances matter. But he has been clear on one point: “In choosing a president of the United States, adultery would greatly matter to me is if it were engaged in indiscreetly. I don't trust the integrity or conscience of a man or woman who publicly humiliates his or her spouse.”

No adulterer in America has been less discrete than Donald Trump. He has admitted to cheating on two wives; he has humiliated them publicly on multiple occasions; he has even given mass media interviews where he brags about committing adultery. Is there anyone who has more flagrantly violated Prager’s standard?