Trump dismissal sessions are a bit like triggering Comey. He has just desensitized us.

In July 2017, Senator Lindsey O. Graham (CS) assured us that there would be "a hell of hell to pay" if President Trump fired Attorney General Jeff Sessions. Some key GOP senators said they would not even hold a hearing on replacement. Just a few months ago, two basic Republican senators warned that they might not vote to replace Sessions if Trump sent him away. They feared – whether in public or private – that Trump would take advantage of this decision to interfere in the investigation of the special advocate Robert S. Mueller III.

On Wednesday, Trump effectively dismissed sessions – but without much hindsight from the GOP. And the new Acting Attorney General, as some feared, would oversee the investigation of the Deputy Attorney General, Rod J. Rosenstein, on the investigation in Russia.

It's a huge revision, forced by Trump, of an investigation into himself – an event perhaps on a par with the dismissal of FBI director James B. Comey. Except that this time, the reaction was more moderate.

This episode is perhaps the most prominent example to date of how Trump desensitizes the public and GOP senators, sometimes for several months, to accept some of his most controversial ideas.

Trump has referred and attacked Sessions in public for more than a year. Most of the time, the discussions focused on whether the sessions would survive – if Trump finally had enough of the man whose challenge as a result of the investigation on Russia, Trump had acknowledged to be his main complaint against the Attorney General.

The suggestions – often implicit rather than straightforward – seem at first sight bizarre and ridiculous, and give rise to the condemnations and warnings you expect, even from Trump's Republican allies. But then Trump continues. While it hits the drum again and again, innuendos become less worthy of interest, fewer media consumers connect, and apocalyptic predictions begin to seem repetitive or even outdated. GOP Senators lose the will to fight Trump, perhaps recognizing that he will do what he wants to do or that it is no longer worth spending their time and political capital to try to stop it. Trump forces them to prove that they really want to annoy him; they are rarely.

And in the case of the sessions, the Republicans started negotiating with Trump. You can do it, senators like Graham began to suggest in August, but not before the mid-term elections of 2018. The rhetorical contract with Trump was so obvious that hardly anyone was surprised that Trump let Sessions go this week. It might have been surprising that it happened just one day after the election, but we knew it would probably happen very soon.

Let's go back to that in the summer of 2017. Graham said then that Trump's dismissal sessions would be "the beginning of the end" of his presidency. Trump had just dismissed Comey, then suggested that he had done so because of the investigation conducted by Russia. Given that Trump had repeatedly lamented the challenge of Sessions against this investigation, it would have been obvious to see what Trump was preparing.

But is it less obvious today? Trump also successfully targeted FBI's chief deputy, Andrew McCabe, who was fired the day before his retirement benefits ended. And it has not yet stated new reasons to get rid of Sessions, apart from the investigation on Russia. Just three weeks ago, in an interview with Fox News, Trump again clarified that his main complaint was that Sessions was not in place for the investigation of Russia.

"Jeff Sessions should never have let that happen; he should never have recused himself, "Trump said. "I mean, here's a man who's challenged, why do not you say I'm going to recuse myself, I will not put him in that position."

As with Comey, Trump had pointed out that the termination concerned mainly Russia. The story has not changed. But Trump made pull the string over – to the point where what once seemed shocking has become a lot less.

From a legal point of view, it may not be of legal importance to see how Mueller could consider withdrawing Sessions in the context of an obstruction of justice. But it will ultimately be Congress that will decide, through any impeachment procedures, which means that public perception counts. And for nearly 16 months, Trump has regularly diluted this issue to the point that people – and GOP senators – are suddenly willing to swallow it.