Vile attacks against Trump have become par for the course

YOU may have heard about a CNN host getting into trouble for his vile statement, on Twitter, against President Trump. Or maybe not, since these verbal assaults occur regularly and, generally speaking, are pretty much ignored by media outlets that share CNN’s liberal worldview.

This treatment exposes a clear and long-established double-standard, which is that ad hominem attacks by progressives against conservatives are OK, but anything close — and often not even close — to the same when the tables are turned merits uproar.

During Barack Obama’s second year as president, as the mid-term elections approached, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said in an interview that his party’s top priority “is for President Obama to be a one-term president.” He was speaking in a political context —GOP goals clearly weren’t going to be realized with Obama in the White House —but Democrats latched onto it and used it for the next six years as evidence of Republican “obstructionism.” Former Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell called McConnell’s statement “absolutely stunning, disgraceful, disgusting —you name the term.”

The progressive rhetoric being used against Trump has gone to new depths.

Following Trump’s decision last week to remove the United States from the Paris Climate Accord, billionaire Tom Steyer called it “a traitorous act of war against the American people.” Bette Middler tweeted that there has “never in US history been such a destructive megalomanic in the WH. Thank you to US press and other numbskulls who put him there.” (That’s especially rich — blaming the press for Trump’s victory.)

Early last month, comedian Stephen Colbert used his late-night talk show monologue to blast Trump for having walked out of an interview with the network’s political director, John Dickerson. Colbert went so far as to make an oral-sex joke about Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin.

The next night, Colbert said simply that he had made “a few choice insults” and that “I don’t regret that.” CBS execs? From them, crickets for something that certainly would have resulted in a firing if the speaker were conservative and the president a liberal.

Yet Colbert’s rant doesn’t hold a candle to CNN’s Reza Aslan. Host of the series “Believer,” Aslan, who was born in Iran, took extreme issue with Trump touting his proposed travel ban shortly after reports aired of the terror attacks in London.

Criticism of Trump’s impulsiveness is often merited, and was in this case. He shouldn’t have tweeted about his policy preference so soon after what occurred in London. But that doesn’t justify Aslan, who called Trump is “a piece of s—-” and said he was “not just an embarrassment to America and a stain on the presidency. He’s an embarrassment to humankind.”

The tweet was soon deleted. Aslan later said he had “lost his cool” and used language that was “not like me.” In fact, it was very much like Aslan, who has used the coarsest of terms in blasting conservatives on Twitter.

In this case, CNN said it was pleased Aslan had apologized, adding, “That kind of discourse is never appropriate.”

Actually, it never used to be appropriate. Today, when Trump is the target, it’s run of the mill.