Over the weekend, all hell broke loose when President Donald Trump made a series of statements that were factually challenged. Speaking before the CIA, he stated that the media had created a fictitious rift between him and the intelligence community – a bizarre statement, given that in recent months he has accused the intelligence community of skewing intelligence regarding Russian hacking of the Democratic National Committee and of leaking against him. Just two weeks ago, Trump suggested that such leaks were reminiscent of “Nazi Germany.”

Then Trump bragged about the size of the crowd at his inauguration. That braggadocio was an attempt to quash stories about how he’d drawn fewer people than Barack Obama. Now, there was an easy way to answer that silly critique: first, crowd sizes don’t matter to the President of the United States; second, crowd sizes reflect the politics of the locale, and Washington D.C. is heavily Democratic. But instead, Trump deployed press secretary Sean Spicer to blast the press. Spicer rightly knocked the press for sending out tweets about the supposed removal of the Martin Luther King Jr. bust from the Oval Office (false) and contrasting two non-comparable photos of inauguration crowds.

Then he started fibbing wildly. He said that “this was the first time in our nation’s history that floor coverings have been used to protect the grass on the Mall.” Not true. Obama used them in 2013. He said this was the first time fencing and magnetometers “went back as far as the Mall.” Nope. Spicer argued that no one had crowd size estimates – but then started estimating crowd sizes by using false statistics regarding public transit (the Metro ridership was higher in 2009 and 2013 than it was on Friday). He said that this was the largest audience ever for an inauguration – a questionable statement at the least, given the television ratings in 2009. He then took zero questions.

Questioned about Spicer’s bizarre presser by Chuck Todd of NBC, Trump spokesperson Kellyanne Conway said that Spicer had simply presented “alternative facts.” Media quickly pounced, rightly labeling this formulation Orwellian. And conservatives rushed to her defense for this asinine formulation. They did so on the basis that the media were happy to present President Obama’s alternative facts as truth – so how could the media now object to the Trump Team purveying lies?

This is just another iteration of the “But Obama!” phenomenon that seems to remove the burden of justifying Trump for too many conservatives. It’s the equivalent of the left’s “Blame Bush” routine, which lasted eight long years. It’s a moral misdirect. What’s worse, it utterly undermines standards altogether. Yes, the media are deeply corrupt. Yes, they regularly bought the falsehoods fed to them by Jay Carney and Josh Earnest and the rest of the Obama fiction writing collective.

Now, here’s the question: why would that make lies from Trump’s team okay?

If you objected to something Obama did – if you objected to the press covering for lies – why would you now want the press to cover for Trump’s lies, or ignore them? Yes, double standards are wrong. Also wrong: no standards. But the now-ubiquitous “But Obama!” protestation means that no standards has become the standard on the right.

That’s not the only misdirect from the right that helps undermine basic notions of truth. Another favorite: but Trump’s doing good things! I have a habit on Twitter and my podcast: when Trump does something good, I label it “Good Trump.” When he does something bad, I label it “Bad Trump.” This might seem uncontroversial, since good things should be labeled good and bad things bad. But for many on the right, Trump’s campaign and victory were to be treated with kid gloves – we had to judge not Trump’s individual actions, but his general ouvre.

There was a certain weak logic to this during the campaign – we were going to vote for Trump based on his ouvre, so why not ignore his perjuries in order to promote his overall agenda? Now that Trump’s president, however, this logic dissipates. His actions matter. We’re no longer in the business of determining whether Trump is Good Trump or Bad Trump for purposes of an election. We’re in the business of determining whether the things he does are good or bad. So why in the hell should Trump’s executive order freezing regulations (Good Trump) justify his insipid, narcissistic focus on crowd size (Bad Trump)? Why can’t we critique all of his actions on the basis of basic decency? Isn’t that the right thing to do? Do we treat our children the way we treat Trump? Or our friends? Or our bosses? Or our spouses? Or do we criticize them when they’re wrong and praise them when they’re right?

But politics has become an ultimate exercise in partisan frivolity. What does it matter if Trump lies, so long as he’s doing stuff you like and the people he’s targeting were Obama sycophants? Why stick to standards when pure tribalism will do?

This is a recipe for the continuous degradation of politics. But hey – who cares, so long as your guy is winning?