The whistleblower’s reward for observing proper procedure has been a chorus of orchestrated Republican talking points aimed at discrediting him and his motives. The message from the GOP is clear to this and any other whistleblower who might ever threaten a Republican president: Cross our Dear Leader, and we will destroy you. Such is the patriotism of a party that is now nothing more than a seedy cult of personality. Even Sen. Mitt Romney — not exactly a tower of courage himself these days — said recently about the Republicans trying to avert their eyes from Trump’s misdeeds: “I think it’s very natural for people to look at circumstances and see them in the light that’s most amenable to their maintaining power, and doing things to preserve that power.”

Trump’s apologists will wave away his comments (including his reference to journalists as “scum”) as just another meaningless example of the president’s swaggering New York style of verbal venting. It might be acceptable for a rich kid from Queens to talk like a sociopathic mobster or beetle-browed junta enforcer when he’s trying to bully the local stonemasons and carpenters on his latest slapdash condo project, but it is utterly unacceptable in a president of the United States. The House Judiciary Committee should add this threat against a CIA officer to its list of impeachable offenses.