A woman who accosted White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer in an Apple store over the weekend acknowledged afterward that she was impolite, but she insisted President Donald Trump’s own incivility justifies jettisoning social norms.
Cornell William Clayton, director of the Thomas S. Foley Institute at Washington State University, says political dialogue in the U.S. has been on this trajectory since the 1990s.
“There’s no question Trump, because he’s our president, maybe makes it okay for people to express themselves in ways that would be considered uncivil or rude because he does it himself,” Clayton added.