Where, exactly, is Rep. Lynn Jenkins’ red line with Donald Trump?

What jumped out at us from a new Esquire story about what lengths President Donald Trump would have to go to to lose GOP support were the spicy quotes from Kansas Rep. Lynn Jenkins. Yes, she who has refrained from speaking frankly even since announcing that she’s leaving public life.

“As the country awaits whatever conclusions Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation brings,” says the piece, “the most important question in politics may be whether there is any red line Trump could cross and lose significant party support.’’ Reporter Ryan Lizza asked a dozen congressional Republicans and found their red line “vanishingly thin and difficult to detect.”

Jenkins told Lizza that “If we tried to respond to everything the president said, we’d never get anything done,” so “she saves her public condemnations of Trump for only his most egregious statements, like the time he made up a story about a female TV anchor ‘bleeding badly from a face-lift.’ “

We’d probably rank the egregiousness of his many offensive statements about women somewhere below caging toddlers, but there is no arguing with her explanation of why even some Kansans who “hate” the president defend him.

“It’s kind of like supporting your favorite team and there’s a talented trash-talking personality on the other team,” she said. “That player is the worst human being on the face of the earth, but if that same talented player is on our team, well, you know, they’re our team, so we give him a pass.”

This story was originally published July 16, 2018 at 2:19 PM.