There’s more than a few reporters who get cranky with me in DM’s or texts whenever I do some tweet complaining about campaign coverage, and we go back and forth a few rounds, and everyone moves on, like it’s the usual partisan back and forth or sour grapes over a bad story (1/?.)

But this week - the revelations about the President, the Mueller redactions, this fresh horror in SDNY - crystallizes it again: it’s not just usual partisanship or gaming coverage. It’s not “cover my candidate better.” It’s “cover this election like we might not get another one.”

It’s: recognize the whole situation is different than what’s come before, the rule of law is on the precipice, and everyone, including and especially the people whose jobs are so critical to democracy that they’re enshrined in the Constitution, needs to act that way.

It’s not politics is just gaffes and tit-for-tat and who’s up who’s down and maybe a policy here or there and it goes in this section, and then the status of rule of law and the health of democracy over in that section. It’s all the same story now.