It’s a wonder sometimes that some Republicans manage to get through the day without tripping over their own feet, in the wake of an unprecedented and likely illegal raid of the home of a former President of the United States, with boxes full of documents and sundry, other items hauled away by FBI personnel.

Case in point, when Sen. Roy Blunt (R-MO) appeared on “This Week With George Stephanopoulos” Sunday, and of course the former Bill Clinton administration senior adviser led off with a question about Donald Trump, asking:

You heard former President Trump in Pierre’s piece saying he did nothing wrong. Do you agree with that? Was he right to take these documents to Mar-a-Lago?

Blunt’s talking point here, as you’ll hear in the clip below, is that Senate Republicans are taking “this so-called raid or seizing of these documents” from former President Donald Trump’s home very seriously.

Pressed by @GStephanopoulos on whether it was right for former Pres. Trump to take classified documents to Mar-a-Lago, GOP Sen. Roy Blunt says, “He should have turned the documents over.”

“I imagine he knows that very well know.” https://t.co/JGBmnO3wk7 pic.twitter.com/dSZBOwitb1

— This Week (@ThisWeekABC) August 28, 2022

How do we know they’re taking it seriously, readers? Blunt says he and several other members of the Intelligence Committee wrote a sternly worded letter

….to the Justice Department and the director of national intelligence to say if there is a problem, why haven’t you told us about that problem?

He then plods along with the response they got from the DNI, that “the director of national intelligence announced I think on Friday that she’s going to be briefing the committee soon and then we’ll know what the problem is.” Unfortunately, as my colleague Nick Arama wrote earlier on Sunday, the process being contemplated by the DNI might not be all that kosher:

The FBI conducted a fishing expedition raid and now, they’re going to have a Biden appointee, a protege of former CIA head John Brennan, walk her way through the Trump documents that may include privileged information. This is even worse than the FBI walking through them. A political appointee is going to be the one to determine how “damaging” the documents are. Oh, that sounds like that will be a fair assessment. How will we know that FISA documents or other documents that might have been damaging to the government might not just disappear?

It’s the same weak reaction we saw from many other Republicans, as we’re covered. But the interview got even worse, since Stephanopoulos was still pressing to get the soundbite leftists will be drooling over for months — and possibly years. It’s the kind of quote they dream of using as a cudgel against Trump and any other Republican who supports him, in campaign ads and on flyers across the country. And other than a perfunctory mention of Hillary Clinton and Jamey Comey, Blunt ends up wilting under the pressure.

Here’s the way it went:

STEPHANOPOULOS: That’s a fair point and we’ll find out why they weren’t or what was going on. It was probably to protect the criminal investigation.

But setting that aside, whether or not these documents were classified, was it right for the president to take these government documents which he is supposed to turn over to the National Archives down to Mar-a-Lago?

BLUNT: It was — you should be careful with classified documents. I’ve had access to documents like that for a long time. I’m incredibly careful.

I was wondering as I was listening to that discussion if the same things were said when Secretary Clinton had documents, when Director Comey had documents, they had them on the Internet which is much more dangerous than having them in a box somewhere.

But everybody needs to be more careful about how these documents —

STEPHANOPOULOS: Senator, you’re still not answering —

(CROSSTALK)

BLUNT: We need to be sure we don’t characterize them differently.

STEPHANOPOULOS: Well, you’re still not — you’re not answering the question. You were critical of Senator Clinton who actually turned over what she had, turned over all her devices. What we have here is a situation where the president did not turn over these documents.

Can you say whether that was right — or right or wrong? Do you believe it was right for the president to take those documents to Mar-a-Lago?

BLUNT: He should have turned the documents over and apparently had turned a number of documents over, George. What I wonder about is why this could go on for almost two years and less than 100 days before the election, suddenly, we’re talking about this rather than the economy or inflation or even the student loan program you and I were going to talk about today?

It might sound harsh to put it this way, but with friends like this in the GOP, who needs enemies?