With accusations flying around about misconduct by people of various political affiliations, I’m seeing lots of accusations of hypocrisy (“Why didn’t you protest when X was accused?”). Many accusations of hypocrisy, however, are false, as I noted in a recent blog, with guests Celestia N. Ward, Ian Harris, and Michael Hartwell…

Hypocrisy seems to be a running theme on the news and in social media, especially in the political sphere. It seems that hardly a week goes by that one political party is not accusing the other of hypocrisy, on everything from confirming Supreme Court judges to health care reforms. When President Trump fired FBI James Comey in May, White House deputy press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders stated that the reaction from Democrats was “the purest form of hypocrisy” and that “Most of the people declaring war today were the very ones what were begging for Director Comey to be fired.” This accusation of hypocrisy is objectively and factually incorrect; though many Democrats had criticized Comey at various times (including for his handling of Hillary Clinton’s e-mail investigation shortly before the presidential election), almost none of them had in fact called for Comey to resign or be fired; the sole exception was Tennessee’s Rep. Steve Cohen. In fact there was bipartisan concern over Trump’s handling of the matter, as well as the varying justifications given for Comey’s firing. Here is an analysis of three examples of claimed hypocrisy, followed by a brief look at the phenomenon.

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