I will get to Mr. Walsh and his racist rants in a moment, but first I will admit that my initial reaction to this email was bemusement at the question posed to me. Mr. Trump’s most vocal supporters are now demanding that Mr. Trump’s most vocal critics do what they will not, which is to publicly recoil against a politician — in this case, Mr. Walsh — who appeals to the worst instincts and ugliest sentiments in America.

Their argument seems to be that decency requires the president’s relatively few conservative critics to call out Mr. Walsh for saying detestable things while Mr. Trump’s right-wing supporters cheerfully defend him under any and all circumstances, regardless of the fact that the president’s rhetoric is pathologically dishonest, dehumanizing, cruel, crude, racist and misogynistic. There’s a word for what Trump supporters are doing here: hypocrisy.

As for the charge of being disingenuous, that is exactly the word to describe those who once railed about the deficit but are now utterly indifferent to it because it is their man who is running up record levels of debt, who once championed free trade but are now defending a president who says “trade wars are good, and easy to win” and who were thrilled when President Ronald Reagan referred to the Soviet Union as the “evil empire” but are now cheerleading for a president who swoons for the overlord of one of the most brutal governments in the world.