Sen. Jim Inhofe: He's crooked, you know.

Way back in the before-times of this same Obama term of office we're currently in, Sen. Jim Inhofe, Republican and blowhard extraordinaire, helped launch a mighty huff over the mere notion that a presidential nominee might have gotten payments from foreign governments or companies. This was in an attempt to derail the nomination of fellow Republican Chuck Hagel as Obama's secretary of defense; the former senator may have been a fellow Republican, but agreeing to work with the nation's not-insane, not-gold-leaf-eating Democratic president was more than enough to kick him out of the Good Republican club.)

Anyway, Sen. Jim Inhofe is crooked. There's probably a better way to put that, but there's few sufficiently terse ways to say "Sen. Jim Inhofe has such contempt for government, for his nation, for his duties and for our citizens that he has devoted himself full time to promotion of his political party over all of them combined." Because the standards of four years ago, Jim Inhofe says, no longer apply.

When The Huffington Post asked Inhofe on Monday night if this same standard of disclosing foreign payments should apply to Trump’s Cabinet nominees, he said it shouldn’t. “So it’s different now because it’s Trump?” we asked. “That’s just right,” Inhofe said. “That’s right?” we asked to clarify. “Yeah,” he said. A spokeswoman later tried to walk back Inhofe’s answers. [...]

Mind you, Inhofe's crooked statement can still be interpreted in several crooked ways. Maybe he means it's because the new president Is Not Black. Maybe he means that everybody knows Trump's team is going to be corrupt from the get-go and Inhofe doesn't want to waste time pretending otherwise or walking nominees into promises they can't keep. Maybe Inhofe is addled, and believes himself to be a senator of the United States of Republicans. The field is open.