Not So Unprecedented

President Trump practically can’t sneeze without critics calling it unprecedented or over the top. Yet time and again, it turns out other presidents, including Barack Obama, have done nearly the same thing — with nary a peep from the haters.

Take Trump’s criticism of a ruling against his travel restrictions and his slam of Judge James Robart as a “so-called judge.”

On CNN, Dean Obeidallah called it “bonechilling” and warned of a “dictatorship.” Slate termed it a “temper tantrum.” Others saw an unprecedented attempt to “delegitimize” the judiciary (never mind all the lefties insisting Trump is not their president).

But, as law prof Josh Blackman gently puts it, Trump is far from the only president to “question the legitimacy of judicial decisions.” Obama publicly — during a State of the Union Address, no less — bashed the Supreme Court justices (to their faces) after their Citizens United ruling.

More to the point, as challenges to his health-care law moved through the courts, he warned of “unelected” justices nixing a law passed by “a democratically elected Congress.” (And other top Democrats suggested they’d even call the high court’s legitimacy into question if it ruled the “wrong” way.) Blackman, based on careful study, calls Obama the worst “offender in modern history” when it comes to opining on pending Supreme Court cases.

Trump also caused conniptions with his decision to let top aide Steve Bannon join the National Security Council, a directive that also noted the director of national intelligence and Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman need attend only as necessary. That, too, won cries of “unprecedented.”

Oops: Obama let adviser, David Axelrod, regularly attend NSC meetings. And Trump’s language in his memo on the DNI and the Joint Chiefs chairman is almost identical to then-President George W. Bush’s. (Turns out, they have no reason to show when the topics are purely domestic.)

Critics went similarly ballistic over Team Trump’s “gag order,” limiting official social-media accounts at agencies like the Environmental Protection Agency until his appointees can take over. Oops again: The New York Times cited employees at three agencies who’d gone through several transitions calling it “standard practice.”

Look: Trump is indeed unusual — it’s one reason he won in the first place. But the hysterics help no one, not even the left’s own cause, by ignorantly “going to 11” without checking the facts.