The damaging scandals in which Clinton has found herself embroiled in the last several months have not gone away with time. In fact, the regular release of new details regarding the Clintons ethically suspect behavior has damaged the former secretary’s image and political prospects in a way that few foresaw earlier this year.

Game Change co-author and Bloomberg columnist Mark Halperin conceded two weeks ago that Clinton’s campaign team has mishandled the various scandals weighing down her candidacy by using a dated playbook to address them. While he claimed that it was perhaps counterproductive for Clinton’s team of professional excuse-makers to go hunting for “McCarthyite” ways in which to impugn her critics’ character and associations, the Bloomberg columnist also preemptively admonished reporters covering the former secretary’s behavior.

Now is the time when all responsible journalists take a deep breath & separate the real, important & interesting from the feeding frenzy

— Mark Halperin (@MarkHalperin) April 23, 2015

Which is a better friend to @HillaryClinton now on emails/foundation $: the facts or non-fact-based enemy overreach? #reality

— Mark Halperin (@MarkHalperin) April 23, 2015

Of course, Halperin surely knows that the arbiters who determine when Clinton’s critics (e.g. Republicans) have overplayed their hands are those “responsible journalists” he scolded sans evidence for jumping to conclusions regarding the former secretary’s myriad ethical lapses.

Halperin brought his reserved judgment to the set of Morning Joe on Monday where he weighed in on Bill Clinton’s latest attempt at self-preservation. As MSNBC hosts Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski cocked eyebrows and stared quizcally into the camera over the former president’s contention that he would continue to accept multi-million dollar speaking fees from dubious organizations because he has to “pay the bills,” Halperin rushed to the Clintons defense.

“They’re held to a higher standard, but they bring a lot of this on themselves,” Halperin said of the Clintons.

“The Clintons are not held to a higher standard,” Scarborough insisted. “The Clintons are held to the lowest of all standard for some reason.”

Halperin shook his head in dismay and, out of sadness more so than anger, insisted that he disagreed with Scarborough’s woefully ignorant comment. Before he could support that contention, however, the MSNBC host let loose with a deluge of examples of political figures losing their careers and sometimes even their freedom over displays of impropriety far milder than those exhibited by the Clintons.

Scarborough added that virtually any other candidate would elect to suspend their campaigns and surround themselves with attorneys if they were accused of half the abuses of authority in which Hillary Clinton has been implicated.

“But what official acts did they take in exchange for something of value?” Halperin asked.

“Well, that’s why we have investigations,” Scarborough replied.

Precisely. In fact, one of those subsequent investigations revealed that at least ten companies collectively paid Bill Clinton over $1 million while they were also lobbying his wife, the head of the State Department, to take a position on immigrant work visas and espionage penalties favorable to their interests. “Three of the technology firms that paid Bill Clinton while lobbying Hillary Clinton’s agency also received lucrative State Department contracts,” that damning International Business Times report read. Maybe Halperin was still inhaling deeply when those allegations were unveiled last week.

Finally, when Halperin observed for the umpteenth time that no one has produced any definitive evidence of quid pro quo, Scarborough noted that that evidence has been made infinitely more difficult to find after Hillary Clinton deleted all the potentially suspect emails she kept on an inappropriate “homebrew” server. Surely, Halperin took yet another deep breath following this statement of fact. If only to keep from hyperventilating.