I was going to leave this at just a few tweets Friday morning, but it genuinely bothers me that reporters and political commentators are using the corruption of the Trump administration to whitewash previous wrongdoing by powerful political players.

It is not just dishonest partisan behavior. It also undercuts the value and weight of legitimate Trump criticisms.

“Started laughing maniacally for a moment recalling the momentous scandal that was Bill Clinton hopping onto Loretta Lynch's plane for a chat,” MSNBC’s Chris Hayes said Thursday to his 1.8 million Twitter followers.

His remark came not long after the release of the findings of special counsel Robert Mueller’s two-year investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election. Though the investigation could not establish evidence that the Trump campaign conspired with Russia to steal the election, or that the president committed a prosecutable obstruction-of-justice offense, the Mueller report certainly is not good news for the White House. Put most simply, it reveals the president and his inner circle as unethical and corrupt.

What is particularly frustrating about Hayes’ Thursday reaction is that it is part of a larger trend by members of media and political circles to rewrite the history of Washington corruption by hiding behind Trump’s misdeeds. It is as if to say, "These scandals over here, which involve members of my team, are not really scandals because Trump is obviously so much worse."

Yes, Trump is not a shining example of what we should want in a chief executive. But that does not retroactively diminish previous offenses committed by members of either of the two major parties that control this country. In fact, Hayes’ attitude is part of the reason so much legitimate Trump criticism falls on deaf ears. Many of the people pushing the anti-Trump line loudest also maintain that their own conspicuously rotten team is mostly pure or (at the very least) the victim of unfair scrutiny. That gives the appearance that they either are delusional or liars, neither of which will convince people who do not already agree with them to take their warnings about Trump seriously.

Regarding Hayes' scoffing at the 2016 “chat” between former president Bill Clinton and Loretta Lynch, it is important to remember what happened. The then-top law enforcement officer in the United States held an off-the-books meeting with the spouse of the target of an ongoing federal investigation from which the former attorney general had refused to recuse herself. Learning later from congressional testimony that Lynch’s Justice Department explicitly instructed the FBI not to charge Hillary Clinton with "gross negligence," even though the former attorney general testified that she had deferred the investigation to the FBI, elevates the private tarmac meeting from ethically dubious to scandalous. In other words, Lynch appears to have saved Hillary Clinton, who faced a charge that doesn't even require a finding of mens rea, from a campaign season indictment. In that light, Lynch's meeting with Bill Clinton will forever mar the decision, even if it was the right call.

While we are at it, the former secretary of state maintaining a homebrew server in her personal bathroom so as to avoid normal record-keeping laws and procedures is a genuine scandal for which she deserved every bit of criticism that came her way. Likewise, the extrajudicial killing of American citizens by drone strike is a scandal. Lying to Congress is a scandal. Monitoring journalists' phone lines is a scandal. Et cetera, et cetera.

Responding to the Trump presidency with variations of "Obama wore a tan suit" and "but her emails” says you are interested in this White House’s corruption mostly because it can be used to sugarcoat your own team's history of malfeasance. Your decision to downplay past abuse by playing up current abuse suggests you do not care that bad people are in power, only that your bad people are not in power.