If a president believes that getting himself re-elected is in the public interest, then why impeach him for using his powers to smear political rivals? So said Alan Dershowitz, one of Trump’s lawyers and former OJ Simpson defender, during his impeachment trial in the Senate this week. In response, Adam Schiff replied that “what we have seen over the last two days is a descent into Constitutional madness.”

But what Schiff doesn’t understand is that the actual truth of what’s good for the country isn’t as important as what the president believes.

We have moved at supersonic speed past any usual expectations here. We went from “that was a perfect phone call” to “that was a somewhat unorthodox phone call without a quid pro quo” to “so what if there was a quid pro quo if it's for the good of the country when presidents do that all the time?” to “so what if it was a quid pro quo specifically to benefit the president if the president believes he is America, goddammit?” faster than a bullet from a good guy’s gun called forth to stop a school shooting by thoughts and prayers.

Few saw Dershowitz’s “defense of delusion” coming — at least not from the president’s own attorney. A seasoned politico may have opined that Democrats would use it to question Trump’s judgment and prove that he can’t be trusted not to pursue quid pro quos in his own personal interest while using the architecture of the presidency to do so. That would have been a little more predictable, a little more within the bell curve of normal distribution.

But Alan Dershowitz marching confidently into one of the most hallowed rooms in the US to announce that he’s here to defend a man he apparently believes psychologically unable to realize he is not the sole savior of the American people was not normal. It was not predictable. It wasn’t just a descent into Constitutional madness. It was a descent into actual batsh*t insanity. It was the sort of “we have always been at war with Eurasia” doublethink that most eleven-year-olds would be sanctioned for trying to employ during a sixth grade debating contest. And isn’t that just kind of exciting and great?

This is, of course, the administration of alternative facts, of fake news, of trials which don’t need witnesses, of abandoned press conferences and open Twitter wars. This is a time of the BEST. COVFEFE. EVER, threatened by bigly LOSERS and a HOAX and a whistleblower who should and shouldn’t be revealed and punished but can’t be anyway because he doesn’t exist. This is the first administration to stand up against live, screaming babies being ripped from evil atheist mother’s wombs and thrown into trashcans by abortion doctors and WHO IS GOING TO STAND UP AGAINST THAT except the evangelical president, the beneficiary of the prosperity gospel, the man who got RESPECT back for AMERICA by being laughed at during a speech at the UN, the one who puts all those four-year-old Mexican rapists behind bars at the border where they BELONG before they can hurt American interests and his sidekicks who know that satanic pregnancies should MISCARRY RIGHT NOW?

All the president's lawyers: The team fighting Trump's impeachment Show all 6 1 /6 All the president's lawyers: The team fighting Trump's impeachment All the president's lawyers: The team fighting Trump's impeachment Alan Dershowitz Dershowitz is a controversial American lawyer best known for the high-profile clients he has successfully defended. Those clients have included OJ Simpson, Jeffrey Epstein and Harvey Weinstein. One longtime Harvard Law associated told the New Yorker Dershowitz "revels in taking positions that ultimately are not just controversial but pretty close to indefensible." Getty All the president's lawyers: The team fighting Trump's impeachment Ken Starr Starr became a household name in the 1990s as the independent counsel who led the investigation that led to Bill Clinton's impeachment. That investigation began as a look into a real estate scandal known as Whitewater, and eventually led to impeachment after Mr Clinton lied under oath about having an affair with White House intern Monica Lewinsky. AP All the president's lawyers: The team fighting Trump's impeachment Jay Sekulow Sekulow is the president's longtime personal attorney, and, now, personal lawyer in the White House. He has been accused by former Rudy Giuliani associate Lev Parnas of being "in the loop" during the Ukraine scandal. Getty All the president's lawyers: The team fighting Trump's impeachment Pam Bondi Bondi is the former attorney general in Florida, and a longtime backer of the president's. She made a name for herself in Florida for taking hyper partisan stances on issues, and her penchant for publicity. She is likely to be a prominent public-facing figure during the trial. AFP/Getty All the president's lawyers: The team fighting Trump's impeachment Pat Cipollone Cipollone is the White House counsel, and leading the president's defence team. Getty All the president's lawyers: The team fighting Trump's impeachment Rudy Giuliani While not officially named as one of the president's impeachment lawyers, it is hard to ignore Giuliani's outsized role in this process. The former mayor of New York has been making headlines for months as he defends his client, and for his apparent role in the effort to compel Ukraine to launch the investigation into Joe Biden. We'll see how he figures in the actual trial, which he has said he would like to be a part of. Reuters

Strap on your MAGA hat and your Mitch McConnell merchandise because we’re going off into the deep end now and we need your unquestioning faith in Republicanism to guide us. If the president believes he isn’t committing an impeachable offense then he isn’t. If getting foreign countries involved in your democracy doesn’t feel wrong then it isn’t. If the only way you can win the election is by digging up dirt on your political rival, then WITCH HUNT and why are you even reading to the end of this sentence, you commie?

Yes, if Joe Biden’s son is corrupt, then he’s corrupt. Just nod along. And if Trump 2020 and Trump 2024 and Trump 2028 is good for the country, then why not make that a reality? If pink unicorns sent from Obama’s real mom in Africa made the economy look worse than it is in Trump’s mind, well then that’s just a problem of perception for the people of America. Lucky the president charitably chooses to see what the rest of us can’t, or we’d be in real trouble.