'we couldn't follow the law because the law's hard, instead we started the gateway for Trump by bending the rules, destroying norms, pretending the meaningless has meaning and creating pretext Conservatives could use for ignoring (first) these fake rules, but later under Trump huge amounts of the the real rules.'.

It was a bullshit agreement, and everyone knew it was, and were knowing in that what they were doing would weaken/damage politics in the USA and adherence to the rules. And they did it anyways. To no productive end but lots and lots and lots of damage.