Trump has America by the private parts. The good news is, people don’t like it.

The bad news? He’s beginning to squeeze.

The acting attorney-general of the United States, Sally Yates — fired for refusing to obey an unlawful order to enforce Trump’s unconstitutional travel ban.

U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara — fired from his job as star investigator of Wall Street’s business cheats, the ones Trump promised to put out of business and Hillary Clinton allegedly empowered.

Musings by the president about disbanding the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals after rulings there struck down Trump’s illegal legislation.

And now FBI chief Jim Comey — fired while his agents were investigating some of the president’s closest campaign advisers over their dubious dealings with the Russians during last year’s presidential race.

There is nothing wrong with President Donald J. Trump that can’t be fixed by impeachment … provided the United States is still governed by institutions and laws, not by one man.

It is an open question whether Trump will destroy America through his own brand of thuggish ego coup, or if America will stop Trump in his dictatorial tracks with the constitutional powers it holds over all presidents. Up until now, the rule has been clear: The office never sanctifies the man.

However it goes down, the building is officially on fire. And that means that time has run out for this perplexed country — particularly for its political and media classes. They can no longer carry on under the illusion that things are somehow normal and the election made all things Trumpian fair and square. (Yeah … Red Square.)

The mewling attempts by many journalists and broadcasters to present Trump’s train-wreck presidency as a conventional duel between rival political parties — a partisan feud like any other — must end now. This is no longer a case of sour grapes from loser Democrats. This is a made-in-the-USA democratic death spiral, engineered from the top.

Still, journalists and legislators dither. Cable news is virtually unwatchable these days, with some outstanding exceptions like Jake Tapper, Jim Scuitto and Chris Cuomo of CNN. They still square up and fight when faced with the malevolence of Trump’s fabrication-machine.

But they are in the minority. The Trump apologists the networks feel obliged to drag on every night for ‘balance’ would be funny … if they weren’t so dangerous. They are not showing respect for the office of president when they twist Trump’s lies and misdeeds into benevolent shapes. They are showing contempt for their fellow citizens.

They are cheerleaders, obsequiously avoiding distressing and calamitous facts. They are exhibiting the patriotism of war profiteers. It’s not a celebration of free speech to lie for this president. It’s a craven spectacle of willful blindness.

If Jeffrey Lord goes on national television and tells one more whopper on Trump’s behalf, his nose will fall off. (Which would end the brown-nosing, at least.)

With the firing of James Comey as head of the FBI, America has fallen down the rabbit hole and been eaten by the rabbit.

It’s not just that Richard Nixon did roughly the same thing to Archibald Cox when he was the special prosecutor looking into Watergate — and getting a little too close to the truth for Tricky Dick’s comfort.

It’s not just that the Trump administration’s stated reason for Comey’s firing — his poor treatment of Hillary Clinton — is absurdity in hot pursuit of farce. Trump wanted her jailed without a trial, as I recall. If this really was about Comey beating up on Hillary, Trump could have fired him last January.

It’s not just that Trump has now contradicted the justification put forth by the entire White House staff for firing Comey — by telling NBC that he’d decided to fire Comey no matter what advice he received. (In other words, he let his top officials lie for him before hanging them out to dry.)

It’s not just that Trump admits to actually calling Jim Comey while he was still leading the FBI Russia investigation and asking him directly if he, the president, was under investigation — a clear act of interference in the investigation.

It’s not even the hilarious spectacle of presidential mouthpiece Sean Spicer holding a press briefing in the dark after hiding from reporters behind bushes at the White House.

(As the Washington Post put it, after Spicer demanded that TV camera operators turn off their lights, he “stood in the dark, offering inconclusive answers relating to James Comey’s sacking.” What a perfect metaphor for working for Trump.)

So why — after all of these appalling things have already happened — is this the moment to dump Trump?

What Trump did to Comey is not politics as usual. It’s obstruction of justice — the beginning of the end of the rule of law in the United States. What Trump did to Comey is not politics as usual. It’s obstruction of justice — the beginning of the end of the rule of law in the United States.

It’s the sum of these actions that make this a crisis moment for Americans — the way in which Trump’s flagrant lies and attacks on the rule of law have put a match to American democracy and foundational rights like freedom of speech. It’s the fact that a reporter got arrested this week for asking a question of Trump’s Health Secretary Tom Price in West Virginia.

No wonder Trump personally made a friendly phone call to Turkish dictator Recep Tayyip Erdoğan after the latter demolished that country’s parliamentary system and replaced it with a presidential model in which he, the president, has the “final say” on nominees to parliament. Turkish jails are now full of opponents of the president and journalists. It’s Trumpian Nirvana.

Remember when Kellyanne Conway, Trump’s Liar Barbie, warned that those who oppose the president should expect “consequences”? It may have been her only truthful public statement to date. Those “consequences” are coming thick and fast now. The rule of law is teetering in the balance, while people munch on hotdogs and watch the NBA playoffs.

Overstatement? Not on your life. First, Comey was dumped while the FBI was investigating Russian interference in the election that brought Trump to power. As a separate issue, Comey was also investigating Trump associates from his presidential campaign to see if there was collusion with Moscow.

And he was getting somewhere. Just hours before Comey was knifed while away on business, the first grand jury subpoenas were issued for associates of disgraced and (belatedly) dumped former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn. You remember him — the senior Trump aide who was cashing Russian cheques and chowing down beside Vladimir Putin.

Just a few days before his firing, Comey reportedly had requested additional funding to pursue the Russian investigation. These two things brought out the thug in Trump. He ordered the hit on Comey; it doesn’t matter how much manure he spreads about taking the advice of the attorney-general and his deputy. Toads and puppets have no influence in this White House; all toads and puppets have is warts and strings.

And still the lies pile up. At first, Trump laid the blame for Comey’s firing on Deputy-Attorney General Rod Rosenstein — who was so happy about that gesture that he threatened to resign.

Now, Trump says he fired Comey because he was a “showboat” and a “grandstander.” Another lie to go with the two whoppers a day Trump has been racking up in his first 100 days in office.

Attorney General Jeff Sessions, who co-signed Comey’s death warrant, was supposed to recuse himself from all things to do with the Russian investigation. Why? Because he also lied about meetings and discussions with the Russian ambassador.

What Trump did to Comey is not politics as usual. It’s obstruction of justice — the beginning of the end of the rule of law in the United States.

Four-star General Michael Hayden, himself a former director of both the CIA and the National Intelligence Agency, hit the nail on the head. Donald Trump, he said, doesn’t want to discuss or dispute the facts — he wants to destroy those agencies of government that obtain them. Like the FBI.

And that’s not the only agency facing Trumpian deconstruction. The Environmental Protection Agency has been turned over to a man whose knowledge of science would be exhausted by a short chat about Noah’s Ark.

Scott Pruitt, the former attorney-general of Oklahoma, just kicked twelve scientists off a scientific review board at the EPA. He plans to replace them with more “industry-aligned” members who care more about bottom lines than bottom land. These guys would drill into their mothers’ graves if they thought there was oil under those dear bones.

This crew even lies about stupid things. President Trump, being the monster of self-praise that he is, told The Economist in an interview published yesterday that he invented the phrase “prime the pump.” He “invented” the bon mot, he said, to explain how he planned to jump-start the U.S. economy.

The phrase actually had been used first in that sense 13 years before Trump was born. It was coined by economist John Maynard Keynes. The keepers of the language over at Merriam-Webster forwarded the phrase’s etymology to the president, which includes a pedigree that went back to the late eighteenth century.

It has come down to one-boor rule in the U.S. — and what a boor it is behind the wheel of the Big Winnebago. Trump is taking Americans — especially the poor fools who voted for him — for a very expensive ride.

Personally, he costs them $3 million a pop every time he leaves Washington and shuffles off to Mar a Lago for his weekly goof-off. He reaps endless profits for his resorts simply by showing up there as president. Wars he said he would stop, he is ramping up again — you know, in keeping with his “Afghanistan First” campaign promise.

And while Trump is building a bonfire of public money, and while the Mexicans are not paying to build the border wall, his relatives are flogging investment visas to wealthy Chinese for $500,000 a pop.

When Nicole Kushner Meyer made the pitch to what the Washington Post described as “a ballroom of wealthy Chinese investors in Beijing”, she was careful to mention that her brother, Jared, who formerly ran the Kushner real estate empire, is a close advisor of the president. They even showed a picture of the Orange One as part of the presentation.

Of course, she apologized in the event anyone thought she was doing something improper — a possibility she tried to avoid by throwing the New York Times and the Post out of the room before the greenback harvest began.

The president doesn’t seem to mind. Why would he, when he and his immediate family members are cashing in on the White House connection like there’s no tomorrow?

Besides, he’s too busy. He has to get the White House ready for his next big visit — this time from the homicidal maniac who runs the Philippines. You remember Rodrigo Duterte? He’s the guy who shoots suspected drug dealers without trial and throws the odd person out of a helicopter.

Now all we have to do is wait to see if those fatted capons of partisanship, Chris Christie and Rudy Giuliani, get to run the FBI.

If they do, it will be time for the Washington Post to make Stephen King their chief political reporter.

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