Last week:

Action on the floor of the House of Representatives paused for more than an hour Wednesday after Rep. Jim McGovern, D-Mass., listed off the criminal charges against former President Donald Trump.

“We have a presumptive nominee for president facing 88 felony counts, and we’re being prevented from even acknowledging it,” McGovern said during debate on the House floor, suggesting that House Republicans had prohibited any honest discussion of Trump’s trials. “A candidate for president of the United States is on trial for sending a hush money payment to a porn star to avoid a sex scandal during his 2016 campaign and then fraudulently disguising those payments in violation of the law.”

House Republicans quickly pushed back against McGovern’s words, with the back-and-forth leading to a lengthy delay as House staff members figured out how to proceed. His remarks were eventually ruled out of order.

Any port in a storm, eh?

The situation started when McGovern, the top Democrat on the Rules Committee, referred to the Republican members of Congress who have attended Trump’s hush money trial in New York. “Maybe they want to distract from the fact that their candidate for president has been indicted more times than he’s been elected,” he said.

Rep. Jerry Carl, R-Ala., who was in the chair presiding over debate, reminded McGovern to “refrain from engaging in personalities” toward the presumed presidential nominees.

It’s not just “personalities” though is it. What’s wrong with Trump goes way beyond “personalities.”

[McGovern] then asked why a Republican member last week could call the Trump trial a “sham” on the House floor and not face the same admonishment by the chair. During a floor speech May 15, Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, repeatedly referred to the “sham trial against the former president in New York,” which he said “relies on an unreliable witness being presided over by a biased judge.” 

But that’s completely different because.