To illustrate the extent to which Trump dominates every news cycle, we at The Fix took a cue from a format many have applied to foreign news and imagined what a report on Murphy's affair might look like in a parallel universe where the Trump phenomenon never happened.

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Rep. Tim Murphy (R-Pa.) on Wednesday admitted to carrying on an extramarital affair with a woman half his age, dealing a self-inflicted blow to his reelection prospects in 2018 and rattling congressional Republicans, who acknowledged privately that the “low-energy” start to President Jeb Bush's first term already has put their House majority in jeopardy.

Murphy, 64, acknowledged a sexual relationship with Shannon Edwards, 32, after the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette successfully petitioned an Allegheny County judge to unseal documents in a divorce case involving Edwards and her husband.

“I ask the media to respect the privacy of my family,” Murphy said at a packed news conference in Washington. “They have done nothing wrong and deserve to be left alone.”

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The salacious details of the affair seem tailor-made for cable news; for one thing, Edwards is just two years older than Murphy's adult daughter.

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Indeed, prime-time pundits on CNN, MSNBC and even Fox News approached the story with a gusto that recalled the furor surrounding former congressman Anthony Weiner's sexting scandal. Bill O'Reilly, who weathered a brief public outrage over sexual harassment claims earlier this year, went so far as to suggest on his top-rated show that Murphy should resign and give the GOP time to rebound before the midterm election, rather than subject the party to a prolonged spectacle.

Edwards's husband, Jesse Sally, alleges in divorce filings that Edwards and Murphy's trysts occurred in Pittsburgh, Miami and Washington. Edwards, like Murphy, is a psychologist, and she told the Post-Gazette that they met when she volunteered to work on a mental health bill that he sponsored, which was signed into law in December.

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She said that she and Murphy had traveled to advocate for the bill. In unsealing court documents, Allegheny County Common Pleas Judge Kathryn Hens-Greco raised the possibility that Murphy abused the resources of his office in the course of the affair.

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“How does anyone know that it does not implicate his public duties?” she asked.