In an ironic twist of events, Democratic Representative Elijah Cummings of Maryland has requested that the FBI investigate the use of private email servers by senior advisor Jared Kushner and wife Ivanka Trump. This investigation primarily concerns the possibility of classified information being passed through vulnerable servers, thusly compromising national secrets and so on, which parallels the investigation of Hillary Clinton around the end of the 2016 election.

While these two are not the only members of the Trump administration that have been found using private emails (both Reince Priebus and Steve Bannon are among them), it is worth noting the closeness of their position to the president and the server, which they re-routed their email accounts through. This illustrates an obvious conflict of interest between the corporate family and their lives in the White House, certainly. But the limited Republican and media response to this series of events is incredibly telling regarding our political system and the American people.

Let’s contrast the handling of the Clinton email scandal with that of the Trump administration. During the presidential election, conversation about Hillary’s emails was obnoxiously common. It was brought up on the news, in debates, in fights with your conservative uncle– anytime someone found the opportunity to use it to attack her credibility. Contrarily, the Trump administration investigation has been largely quiet, and while the lack of regular debates is no doubt a contributor to it, the fact that the Republican party is obviously not nearly so offended by these allegations still shows a clear difference in the treatment of Clinton and Trump.

For Republicans, the whole email scandal was an opportunity to take advantage of the mistrust many Americans already felt towards Clinton. It was a witch hunt, more concerned with demonizing her than actually proving any fault; by watering the seeds of doubt in the American public, Republicans could reap the benefit through the subsequent votes. The emails never mattered, but framing Clinton as corrupt did.

Moreover it illustrates a party’s willingness to excuse the actions of someone within their sphere if only because they share the same political stance. Democrats are guilty of this too, do not misunderstand me, but one cannot help but notice the refusal of Trump-voters to reconsider their vote or perhaps think that they might have made a mistake. Even now when this administration is being investigated for the very things that made Clinton so crooked and nasty in the first place, they defend their choice to vote this man into power.

I will be quite frank: I don’t care about the emails, nor do I truly care about Trump getting in trouble for them. It seems like a very small transgression in comparison to the absolute mess that we have bore witness to the last few months. What’s an email scandal to the threat of nuclear war?

But the fact remains that Trump’s actions, and by extent his cabinet’s actions, will likely continue to be excused for the sake of convenience, even where there is obvious hypocrisy. Perhaps this will change and the administration will be held accountable for their actions, but until then I have a bomb shelter to stock up.