“New York Times” White House correspondent Peter Baker on “Washington Week” told panelists that while he understands the “concern” from “Trump people” about President Biden weaponizing the White House, at least he didn’t demean the president.

FRANKLIN FOER, ‘WASHINGTON WEEK’ GUEST HOST, THE ATLANTIC: And Peter, I want to just pause further on the accusation of treason, because it is so extreme. And I think also it’s something that is, you know, in terms of its magnitude, outweighs anything having to do with the Epstein case. And it wasn’t something that was necessarily leading the news or on the front page of newspapers. And it is not an isolated incident. It’s reflective of a trend in his rhetoric. And you wrote about this the other week. And I want to quote from it. You wrote, evil is a word getting a lot of airtime in the second Trump term. Anyone viewed as critical of the president or insufficiently deferential is wicked. The Trump administration’s efforts to achieve its policy goals are not just an exercise in governance, but a holy mission against forces of darkness. Yeah. PETER BAKER, NEW YORK TIMES WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Yeah. And it’s so much easier if your opponent, your rival, your competitor isn’t just somebody you disagree with, isn’t just somebody who has bad policy ideas, maybe, but is somebody who is wicked or evil, because then you justify all kinds of things that come up. Right. And the reason why I wrote that article was because the president was asked at one point about Ali Mayorkas, who’s the secretary of Homeland Security under Biden. And somebody said, should he be locked up because the border was so bad? And he says, yeah, that’s something we should look at. Kristi Noem, he says to his own secretary of Homeland Security, you should look at that. Should we put Mayorkas in prison because of the border? That’s not accusing him of a criminal act. He’s simply saying that by, I don’t like his policy, therefore I would go ahead and imprison him. Guess what? Nobody paid attention to that because, in fact, we hear him say things like this so much. And I know a lot of Republicans, a lot of Trump people say, well, you know, the Biden people weaponized government by going after Donald Trump. OK, I understand that concern by a lot of people. He was pursued by prosecutors. You never heard President Biden say, hey, this guy’s guilty of treason. He never put a video on there showing Trump being locked up. He recognized it was his job as president to stand back and let the justice system handle this as the justice system should. It wasn’t his job to try to demonize or vilify his enemies. Now, he said a lot of bad things about Donald Trump. Fair enough. I’ve heard that from Trump people since I wrote that article. But but it just doesn’t come close to what what Donald Trump does. And it’s a departure, right?

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