This is not the only critique leveled against Comey. As my colleague Adam Serwer has written, Comey’s own accounts do not necessarily put him in a good light. Others have focused on Comey’s tendency toward sanctimony—which makes the apparent pettiness all the stranger.

But Comey is not the only person who has seen himself tempted toward petty commentaries in the time of Trump. Distinguished, staid officials, exemplars of sobriety and seriousness, pillars of the intelligence and law-enforcement communities: They’ve all heard the petty sniping of the Trump, whom they detest, and found it difficult to resist responding in kind.

In March, Ashley Merryman wrote in The Washington Post about how the president’s demeanor could influence the nation. “Behaviors such as aggression, anger, blaming, bullying, dishonesty, greed, narcissism, negativity, profanity and incivility are all social contagions,” she wrote. “A social contagion describes how others’ actions infect mood and behavior, just as you might catch someone’s flu. With prolonged exposure, you’re at greater risk, but even a brief event—reading one tweet or watching a video clip—can affect behavior.”

If there really is a social contagion, the president’s critics are patient zero.

Take Walter Shaub, the former head of the Office of Government Ethics—universally described, when he suddenly and unexpectedly became a public figure, as a reluctant and shy bureaucrat. Now working at the Campaign Legal Center, Shaub has become a quasi-celebrity, and also a prodigious Twitter merchant of snark …

Fascinating tweet in which Sarah Sanders reveals that Mike Pence was simultaneously in Peru and Washington. If this new capability doesn’t scare our enemies, nothing will. #QuantumEntanglementMike https://t.co/YdeILzG28M — Walter Shaub (@waltshaub) April 15, 2018

… and sick burns:

Uh oh, this tweet didn’t age well. (Man, talk about irony.) — Walter Shaub (@waltshaub) April 9, 2018

Shaub is not the only lawyer to discover a talent for zingers. Here’s former acting Solicitor General Neal Katyal, combining news of a raid on Michael Cohen with a fatal fire at Trump Tower:

Why, is she a tenant in your building? https://t.co/PZo17biGFu — Neal Katyal (@neal_katyal) April 10, 2018

Or Preet Bharara, who was U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York until Trump broke a pledge to keep him and instead fired him:

He would've run in there unarmed? Show of hands: how many of you would feel safe relying on the physical bravery of Donald Trump as a volunteer guarding your kids' school? — Preet Bharara (@PreetBharara) February 27, 2018

It’s not totally clear what former George W. Bush White House ethics chief Richard Painter is doing here, but sure:

Just got an email from a woman named Lara Trump with the caption “Can we text?” I am sure that if I start texting her she will start asking for money. What should I tell her? — Richard W. Painter (@RWPUSA) March 2, 2018

It’s not just jokes. Esteemed legal scholar Laurence Tribe is so driven to distraction by Trump that he has fallen for wild conspiracy theories. Former CIA Director James Brennan has opted for florid, grandiose insults:

Your kakistocracy is collapsing after its lamentable journey. As the greatest Nation history has known, we have the opportunity to emerge from this nightmare stronger & more committed to ensuring a better life for all Americans, including those you have so tragically deceived. https://t.co/eC6LATH2Gd — John O. Brennan (@JohnBrennan) April 13, 2018

One could also lump in the tendency among some Democrats to swear more profusely since the election, which Alex Roarty identified last year.