Analysis: Trump is normalizing things that would have been scandals in his first term | CNN Politics

One of the earliest scandals of Donald Trump’s first term came when the FBI director he had just fired, James Comey, testified that the president had demanded his loyalty. This was a problem for two reasons: because FBI directors are supposed be independent and because Comey happened to be investigating Trump. The president, the White House and Trump’s legal team all denied Comey’s claim. Fast forward nine years, and Trump is once again looking for loyalty in all the wrong places — except this time very publicly. He casually suggested over the weekend that Supreme Court justices he appointed — public servants who, like an FBI director, are not supposed to show favoritism — should be more loyal to him than they have been. But today, Trump’s social media missive barely feels like news. The juxtaposition epitomizes how Trump is doing things in his second term that would have been major controversies in his first but barely register now. That’s because he’s spent a decade gradually upping the provocations and wearing down his critics’ willingness to raise a fuss. Trump claimed in his Sunday social media post that Democratic-appointed justices were more politically l