Credit where it's due: Squint And The Meat Puppet did a bang-up job Wednesday morning of waving torches at the monster their show helped to create. I thought Mika was going to stroke out during their interview with Congressman Peter King, the former leader of the Óglaigh na hÉireann caucus in the House, who kept trying to change the subject to how the late Michael Brown got what he deserved. And, in The New York Times, Tom Friedman wrote a whopper of a lead and, later in the column, tossed a nice little elbow at Bibi Netanyahu in the process.

Good on all of y'all. The bar is a couple of inches off the ground and you cleared it with ease.

(Of course, the Morning Zoo Crew on MSNBC moved along to a segment in which everybody had a good laugh at Keith Olbermann in absentia, a guy without whom MSNBC would be running juicer ads for most of its programming. Listening to Mike Barnicle mock someone's professionalism is like listening to Whitey Bulger discuss financial planning.)

But what of Speaker Paul Ryan, the zombie-eyed granny-starver from the state of Wisconsin, who won re-election by a historically fat margin later in the same day that He, Trump made his infamous remarks in Wilmington, North Carolina? Surely, as a national leader and a public intellectual, he would rise to the level of the threat posed by his party's nominee.

Right, L.A. Times?

"It sounds like just a joke gone bad. I hope he clears it up very quickly," Ryan told reporters after he handily won his House primary. "You should never joke about something like that."

Leadership!

(Squint, it should be noted, launched into an extended cri de Coeur, lamenting what Ryan was doing to "the last shreds of his reputation." But those of us who have followed ZEGS for a while now know that his desire to gut Medicare and throw Social Security onto the tender mercies of his pals in the financial services industry always will far outweigh whatever responsibility he feels toward the country at large. Biggest. Fake. Ever. )

Oh, it's a mess for them all now. Up in New Hampshire, Senator Kelly Ayotte, who saw Susan Collins of Maine beat her to the last lifeboat off the listing hulk on Monday, is caught in an impossible position, having endorsed El Caudillo de Mar-A-Lago long ago. Newt Gingrich thinks everything's dandy because Andrew Jackson. Sean Hannity seems to be steadily losing what's left of his mind.

It's a gloriously floundering death for a politics that has done so much damage to the rest of the country. And, even with all that, none of them get it—that nearly four decades of conservative politics, and the techniques those politics used to attain and maintain power, made someone like He, Trump inevitable. They ate the monkeybrains long ago, and this is what happens when the prion disease reaches its terminal stage. You don't even remember how you got so crazy in the first place.

For example:

Donald Trump once said that he saw Muslims dancing to celebrate the 9/11 attacks.

Ronald Reagan once said that he helped liberate Nazi concentration camps.

Donald Trump once said that Mexican rapists were pouring over our borders, threatening our national security.

Ronald Reagan once said that the Nicaraguan Army could be in Brownsville, Texas in two days, threatening our national security.

Donald Trump once said the global climate crisis was a hoax made up by the Chinese.

Ronald Reagan once said that trees caused more air pollution than automobiles.

Yeah, Trump is a real outlier.

More details as the day progresses, I'm afraid.

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Charles P. Pierce Charles P Pierce is the author of four books, most recently Idiot America, and has been a working journalist since 1976.

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