Jimmy Carter is the voice of sanity and morality in a nation that's desperately lacking both

The Washington Post is just one of several sources rushing to claim that President Jimmy Carter crossed a dangerous line in saying that Donald Trump’s election was “illegitimate.” Almost unbelievably at this point, the article argues that “labeling Trump an illegitimate president is the kind of thing that can destabilize the country—which, as it happens, is precisely what Vladimir Putin and Russia aimed to do with their 2016 interference.” And that gem comes after the admission that Carter is almost certainly right, that the level of interference in the 2016 election was more than sufficient to account for Trump’s slim margin of victory in a handful of states.

That’s a take that is … what is that technical term again? Ah. Profoundly stupid.

It’s not calling out illegitimacy that destabilizes a system. It’s the f’ing illegitimacy. In the terms of the Post article, it’s not steroids that are endangering sporting events, it’s that pesky testing for steroids that’s “destabilizing.” The idea that if you’d just let everyone carry on under the delusion that things are still running fairly, then things would be ever so much better than if you informed people that someone was ripping up the rules … has to be the face-palmiest attitude in a symphony of face palms.

Jimmy Carter—a man who has literally devoted his life to public service, a man who most selfish act may have involved putting some extra sugar on his grits—is not only right, the Post admits he is right. And what makes their argument beyond idiocy is that Putin already scored his victory. He scored it when Trump was elected. He scores it again every day Trump puts children in cages, compliments Nazis, or grins at his good pal Vlad.

And every single person, The Washington Post included, who calls for sitting down and swallowing what Putin gave us, is aiding and abetting that victory.