National Review senior editor Charles C. W. Cooke, on today’s edition of The Editors, pushed back against the mainstream media’s framing of the Comey indictment and said that while he finds the case “ridiculous,” this sort of prosecution is not new.

Cooke said that the media seem to have a skewed vision of the DOJ: “‘In the beginning, there was the Department of Justice, and it was good. And then Donald Trump was reelected for a second term. And for the first time ever, political motivations sullied the judicial process.’”

This understanding, however, is “just not true,” Cooke said. “And in fact, there is an implication in these pieces in the Times and elsewhere that it’s not true when they claim that Trump is acting out of revenge, which he is. But revenge for what? Revenge for having been on the [receiving] end of these sorts of games.”

Cooke pointed out that “this has been a defining feature of our politics for at least a decade, both in circumstances in which the dog barks and in circumstances in which the dog does not bark. Hillary Clinton was given special treatment, for example, in 2016, which has led to great confusion around how we treat classified documents and an awful lot of resentment that is justified.”

“I condemn this. I don’t want to see it. I think it is indefensible. I think the case is ridiculous. I think it is quite clearly pretextual and personal, but I don’t want to hear that this is new.”

The Editors podcast is recorded on Tuesdays and Fridays every week and is available wherever you listen to podcasts.