Jeffrey Toobin to Rick Santorum: ‘You based your career on morality, now you’re making excuses for paying off porn stars’

In a contentious exchange on CNN today, legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin called out former GOP Senator Rick Santorum, who is a conservative Catholic, for seemingly making excuses for President Trump‘s alleged past hush money payments to women he’s had extra-martial affairs with.

In the wake of new reports centering around Trump’s ordering of associates to direct payments to women with the intention of covering up alleged affairs and other damaging information, Toobin and Santorum appeared in Anderson Cooper 360 to discuss the new developments. According to Santorum, nothing illegal happened.

“To me, the most damaging thing is that the president hasn’t come clean over the course of time,” Santorum said.

That’s when Toobin chimed in, pointing out what he sees as Santorum’s hypocrisy — being someone who’s made an entire career on preaching “family values” and morality in politics while at the same time providing cover for Trump’s sexual trysts.

“Putting aside the issue of how amazing it is to listen to Rick Santorum who made his entire career — successful for a time — on the basis of morality in politics, making excuses for paying off porn stars and women with whom you’ve had affairs, putting that to one side…” Toobin said before being interrupted by Santorum.

“Jeffrey, you’re not going to put that to the side,” Santorum barked. “I’m not making excuses for Donald Trump having an affair with a porn star. I mean, that’s disgusting, that’s tawdry. I’m addressing the question as to what is the illegality is involved here.”

“Isn’t the reason he’s lying because he did something bad in the first place?” asked Toobin.

Oh snap! @JeffreyToobin on "how amazing it is to listen to @RickSantorum, who made his entire career…on the basis of morality in politics, making excuses for paying off porn stars and women with whom you’ve had affairs." pic.twitter.com/L30lzoDu6f — Josh Campbell (@joshscampbell) December 14, 2018

According to various reports, Trump was at an August 2015 meeting that investigators believe was part of an illegal scheme to violate campaign finance laws to help Trump win the presidency.

CNN reports that court filings say former Trump attorney Michael Cohen, chairman of American Media Inc. David Pecker, and “one or more members of the campaign” met in August 2015. At the meeting, “Pecker offered to help deal with negative stories about that presidential candidate’s relationships with women by, among other things, assisting the campaign in identifying such stories so they could be purchased, and their publication avoided.”