Pierce: How Much More Absurdity Can You Handle?

http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/news/a56258/donald-trump-jr-email/

...When I went to bed Monday night, the hot revelation from The New York Times in which it was revealed that, back last summer, Junior had been told via email that the Russian government was trying actively to assist his father's presidential campaign and to ratfck the campaign of Hillary Rodham Clinton. This was prior to the meeting arranged by Russian power-lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya, which Junior attended with Paul Manafort and Jared Kushner, the revelation of which had been Sunday's hot story. By the time I awoke on Tuesday morning, the Times had the text of the email itself. Wow, I thought. Junior's going to have trouble slithering out from under this now. I sat down and prepared to write about this latest absurdity. Little did I know that Junior himself had sent the absurdity zooming into the bizarre and beyond.

On the electric Twitter machine, for reasons known only to whatever pagan deity watches over this gang of grifters and fools, Junior had published the entire email chain, the contents of which, in any ordinary time, would have everybody involved being fitted for leg-irons, their room reservations at Leavenworth already booked...

The email chain makes clear that the Trump campaign colluded with the Russian government. Further, it also makes plain that not only Junior, but also Manafort and Kushner knew the campaign had done so because Junior was kind enough to forward the emails to them. He incriminated himself. He incriminated the other two. He made a lie out of practically everything that the Trump camp has said on the subject for over a year. He landed a clean shot below the waterline of his father's administration. Again, I thought of Nixon, standing behind a podium in the White House, while the tape from June 23, 1972 unspooled to an eager world, and then telling the assembled press corps, "See? It's just like I said. I'm not involved." It also was announced that Junior would appear with Sean Hannity on Tuesday night. I fully expected Junior to show up on the set dressed as an evil boyar from an Eisenstein film....

The government of the United States is a shambles. An incompetent administration headed by an unqualified buffoon is now descending into criminal comedy and maladroit backstabbing. It is an administration that not only self-destructs, but glories in the process. There seems to be no end to it, and no desire to end it by the people who actually have the power to do so. That, in itself, seems curious, and it probably should remind us all that Paul Ryan's Super PAC was hip-deep in the borscht itself. Ryan, who really is the person best situated to close the circus down, seems to be afflicted with one of his periodic bouts of invisibility, poor lad.