By any reasonable standard, the 2016 election was deeply tainted. It wasn’t just the effects of Russian intervention on Mr. Trump’s behalf;

That a lie. Russia did not “intervene in the election on Mr. Trump’s behalf.”  Russia facilitated the access of useful information  about the corruption within the Clinton campaign and by the candidate herself to the public via the news media, including Krugman’s own paper. There is no evidence that this altered a single state’s choice for President, and if it did, it was genuine information that the public had a right to know that changed votes, not Russia.

Hillary Clinton would almost surely have won if the F.B.I. hadn’t conveyed the false impression that it had damaging new information about her, just days before the vote. This was grotesque, delegitimizing malfeasance, especially in contrast with the agency’s refusal to discuss the Russia connection.

Krugman, an economist who should know better, thus endorses the convenient post hoc ergo propter hoc arguments that the Clinton camp has pushed to excuse its own failures. First, the fact that a legitimate, ethically mandatory act (which Comey’s letter was) may have or even did affect the vote totals doesn’t make the election “tainted.” This was a sequence of events flowing directly from Clinton’s unethical handling of her e-mail at State and her subsequent endless lying about it. Any votes Clinton lost because of her e-mail machinations were her own fault.

Second, for Comey’s letter to have “tainted the election” would require it to have been sent in order to affect the election by hurting Clinton. There is no reason to think that was the case, and it is certainly dishonest to assert it is the case.  If Comey had wanted to help Trump, he could have recommended that Clinton be indicted in July, a decision that would have been reasonable and difficult to deny. As it was, his decision not to prosecute was one that Republicans argued was based on illicit partisan favoritism for Clinton.

Finally, and I seem to be one of the few who have pointed this out, the hysterical reaction by Clinton and Democrats to the Comey letter was so furious  that it made Clinton look like she had something to hide. All she had to say was that Comey was doing his job, that the FBI had already determined that no laws were broken and that Hillary was confident that the new e-mails wouldn’t alter that assessment. Clinton’s handling of every aspect of the e-mail controversy harmed her candidacy, and justly so. She turned the Comey letter into another self-inflicted wound.

Was there even more to it? Did the Trump campaign actively coordinate with a foreign power? Did a cabal within the F.B.I. deliberately slow-walk investigations into that possibility? Are the lurid tales about adventures in Moscow true? We don’t know, although Mr. Trump’s creepy obsequiousness to Vladimir Putin makes it hard to dismiss these allegations. Even given what we do know, however, no previous U.S. president-elect has had less right to the title. So why shouldn’t we question his legitimacy?

No previous President has had more right to the title, since Trump received the votes to win him an overwhelming victory in the Electoral College. How does Krugman reach the conclusion that Trump has less right to an office he was unquestionably elected to than any single President, much less all of them? Simple: Krugman doesn’t like Trump, so that’s enough. Fairness suspended by order of  Rationalization #31. The Troublesome Luxury: “Ethics is a luxury we can’t afford right now”, aka. “The New York Times Rule.” In truth, several Presidents have arguably had less “right” to the title than Trump: John Quincy Adams, Rutherford B. Hayes, Gerald Ford, and George W. Bush.

More about that later today, but back to Krugman:

“It would be one thing if the incoming commander in chief showed any hint of humility, of realizing that his duty to the nation requires showing some respect for the strong majority of Americans who voted against him despite Russian meddling and the F.B.I.’s disinformation dump. But he hasn’t and won’t.”

After eight years of Barack Obama, it takes magnificent gall to suggest that lack of humility justifies a verdict of Presidential illegitimacy. It take more gall for a prominent member of “the strong majority of Americans who voted against him” (note the classic Krugman deceit: that “strong majority” is reached by including third, fourth and fifth party candidates) to make the argument that Trump should show special respect for a group that has shown less respect for him than any opposition voters have for a President-Elect since the Confederacy fired on Fort Sumter.

“…And he’s surrounding himself with people who share his contempt for everything that is best in America. What we’re looking at, all too obviously, is an American kakistocracy — rule by the worst.”

They are “the worst” because Paul Krugman says so, and thus Donald Trump’s election shouldn’t count. What Donald Trump and his cabinet stand for include core American values, and the position that what he has stood against are what is “best about America” is an opinion that Krugman doesn’t have the integrity to back up with specifics, for then he could be challenged.

“What this means is that Mr. Trump must not be treated with personal deference simply because of the position he has managed to seize”

This is despicable, and absent its richness as unethical punditry, would cause me to stop reading under normal circumstances. Krugman, the cur, is deliberately injecting the lie, and it is a lie, that Trump “seized” the Presidency. If he had seized it, Lewis’s attack and Krugman’s defense of it would not be the unpatriotic, un-American and dangerous statements they are. A seized Presidency is illegitimate. It is the Democrats who have been trying to seize the Presidency since November 8. Donald Trump was elected.  He was awarded the Presidency through the democratic process.

“He must not be granted the use of the White House as a bully pulpit. He must not be allowed to cloak himself in the majesty of office. Given what we know about this guy’s character, it’s all too clear that granting him unearned respect will just empower him to behave badly.”

What else is this but a call to overthrow the President of the United States?

Luckily, no prior heroism gives Krugman a plausible King’s Pass to hide behind: he is one of the most irresponsible and hateful hyper-partisan pundits given a forum in a major U.S. daily. Yet he is no worse than John Lewis, a U.S. Congressman who is willing to undermine the government and Constitution he is sworn to protect.