Until now, Donald Trump has avoided being fully captured by novelists simply by behaving worse than any of them could fathom. But the great fiction writers who stormed the White House over the past few years share some of the blame, too. Howard Jacobson, Salman Rushdie and Dave Eggers all took steady aim at the bloated target, but in their satirical novels, anger curdled their humor and ultimately blunted their barbs.

Christopher Buckley is not angry about Donald Trump. He sounds instead as delighted as a fly discovering the world’s largest pile of manure. The comic genius behind such classics as “Thank You for Smoking” has given us an outrageously funny novel equal to the absurdity roiling Washington. The explosion of topical gags in “Make Russia Great Again” will — one hopes — someday require a host of footnotes to explain, but let the future worry about that. Typically, comedy is tragedy plus time. For now, we’ll have to make do with tragedy plus Buckley.

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The madcap plot reads like Nancy Pelosi’s birthday wish. U.S. Cyber Command discovers that one of its artificial intelligence programs called Placid Reflux has gone rogue. Noticing that the United States never responded to Russian interference in our 2016 election, Placid Reflux secretly retaliates by interfering in the Russian election. The U.S. intelligence community is terrified that Trump will find out and shut them down, or that Putin will find out and reveal what he has on Trump. (Spoiler alert: The “grabbing” was videotaped. Eighteen times.)

As the president’s most dedicated servant, Herb is charged with placating Putin by secretly negotiating with Oleg Pishinsky, a Russian oligarch who dispatches his enemies with a nerve agent the CIA calls “Oil of Oleg.” Herb has little training in high-level espionage, but his years in the hospitality field have prepared him to deal courteously with murderous personalities.

There’s much to choose from here, but perhaps the funniest aspect of “Make Russia Great Again” is how calmly Herb conveys the craziness of the Trump administration...