Last night Sen. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.), the loudest GOP critic of President Donald Trump on Capitol Hill, invoked the I-word amidst speculation that Trump might fire Robert Mueller:

Then a funny thing happened: Both left and right crapped all over him.

“Stop begging. Pass a law,” scoffed Tommy Vietor, former National Security Council spokesman in the Obama administration. “It’s right there in the Federalist Papers,” a sarcastic New Republic staffer Jeet Heer seconded. “Congress will be able to check the president by going on its hands and knees, begging for lawful behaviour.”

Things weren’t much friendlier on Team Red. “Sounds more like a Jeff Flake crisis than a constitutional crisis,” snorted commentator Dan Bongino. At The American Spectator, Brandon J. Weichert placed Flake in the “chorus of consternation from so-called congressional conservatives.”