It's not every day you see a United States congressman go Zidane on a camera in the halls of the Capitol, but then again, the year is 2019. We ought to be thankful there were no Stone Cold Stunners involved. Granted, it is probably annoying as hell to have some guy following you around your place of work asking you the same question over and over. Also granted, you signed up to be an elected official, meaning a core component of your chosen profession—at least in theory—is to be constantly held accountable by the public, the press, and your peers. Of course, a big problem in our politics of the moment is that the president's Republican allies refuse to exercise their constitutional powers to hold him accountable for abusing his authority and violating his oath of office.

That was the point at issue Thursday when Representative Don Young of Alaska was tailed through the hallways by activists from MoveOn, a lefty group with a simple question for him: "Do you think it’s OK for the president to pressure foreign governments to interfere in our elections?" Of course, being a Republican congressman in the Year of Our Lord 2019, Young was never going to offer up the simple—and seemingly obvious—answer: No, that's not cool. Instead, he opted for the playful, but nonetheless weird, headbutt.

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Watch Republican Congressman @repdonyoung (R-AK) headbutt the camera when we asked him if it’s okay to ask foreign governments to interfere in our elections.



And no, he never answered the question. pic.twitter.com/FWgmkdzycG — MoveOn (@MoveOn) October 31, 2019

This is just a particularly striking example of the complete refusal from the president's allies to defend his behavior on the merits. The vast majority of the interference Republicans are running on the Ukraine debacle has to do with process complaints about how Democrats are running their impeachment inquiry. These complaints have never had much purchase, but now Democrats have, as demanded, passed a resolution formally outlining the rules and processes of impeachment. (Republicans then dismissed the rules they'd previously demanded as Stalinism.) But by and large, nobody is really saying, Yeah, it was cool and good that the president abused his power to wield American foreign policy to benefit his personal political interests and, in the process, solicit foreign intervention in an election.

That's certainly coming down the pike, of course. We are headed inexorably towards the argument at the root of the issue and, in truth, at the root of Trump's movement in general: It's not illegal because Donald Trump did it. He is the state, after all. He is America. What he does is in the national interest, because his interests are the national interest. Like when he handed northern Syria to Turkey and Assad, because, uh, reasons. Because fuck you, that's why. Anyway, good of Mr. Don Young to illustrate the general attitude.

Jack Holmes Politics Editor Jack Holmes is the Politics Editor at Esquire, where he writes daily and edits the Politics Blog with Charles P Pierce.

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