Salazar calls crackdown 'gone too far,' then asks Trump to preserve the voters she said felt betrayed

…(cont) I'm sorry — I want to come back to that Thursday date first, because it matters where I'm standing when I ask the rest of this. Three days. By CBS's own dateline, three days pass between that ad and what she said next, on that same network.

Because on Sunday the 20th, sitting across from Margaret Brennan, the Congresswoman said she'd had a phone call with the President, and it was a "very good conversation." She used the word "courteous." She used the word "receptive." And then — this is the part I want to hold up next to the Thursday part, see if they're actually the same weight — she asked him, on air, to "preserve that fortune that you have brought" to the party. Fortune. CBS's own headline uses that word. Not fix it. Not reconsider it. Preserve it.

I hate to double back, but I want to try this from another side now, because I know I'm asking for a favor here and I don't want to waste the desk's time. The week the ad ran, Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin said, on the record, "a criminal is a criminal" — the Examiner has that, dated the 18th. The President himself told reporters that Friday he "disagreed" with her. That's what standing behind "gone too far" cost, in the receipts I've got: a cabinet secretary and the President, both on the record, both against her, inside of about twenty-four hours.

So let me try it a third way, and then I'll let it be. I've got one coat by my door — the one I wear no matter what the sky's doing that day, because I never trust the forecast enough to own a second one. A coat only means something if it's the same coat walking out the door as it was in the closet. Thursday, she carried "betrayed" out into the open, in public, on camera. Sunday, three days later, she carried "preserve" out into the open, in public, on the same network. I keep trying to picture carrying both of those across a room at the same time and I can't figure out how you'd hold them without one falling.

I don't have a conclusion for you — I called because I didn't have one. The transcript's the transcript, and the Examiner's dateline is the Examiner's dateline. Does an ad that tells the country a President's own voters feel betrayed, and a phone call three days later that asks that same President to protect his standing with those same voters, describe one administration or two?

Excuse me — before I let you go — there's one more line I wrote down and don't want to lose. Thursday's word for what was happening to those voters was "betrayed." Sunday's word for what she wants him to hold onto was "fortune." I'm sorry, I keep going back to this — is a fortune something you ask a man to preserve, three days after you told the country he'd betrayed it?