Seth Meyers tackled the Russian Connection and Neil Gorsuch's confirmation hearings last night, but first he had something more important to deal with: Did President Trump, a Republican, just find out Abraham Lincoln was a Republican? Meyers threw on a clip of the president imploring his colleagues to tell their completely unaffiliated SuperPACs to start running ads reminding people where Honest Abe's allegiances lie:

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Of course, as Meyers noted, the GOP literally calls itself the Party of Lincoln. This operates on the presumption that if he were alive today, Lincoln would be a Republican. Please, no laughing in the back.

Anyway, then it was time to get down to the real business. Soon after FBI Director James Comey confirmed the agency was looking into possible coordination between Trump associates and Russian officials, the AP reported former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort secretly worked for a Russian oligarch to advance Vladimir Putin's agenda. White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer's response was to act like Manafort and the president scarcely knew each other, claiming Manafort "played a very limited role for a very limited amount of time."

The man was the chairman of the campaign for months. What is Spicer talking about? Meyers drove the point home with a montage of Trump and his aides and surrogates praising Manafort's good work. All the clips, we can safely assume, came before Manafort was forced to resign after questions about his activity on behalf of pro-Russian figures in Ukraine.

The White House pulled the same strategy with Michael Flynn, whom Spicer called "a volunteer" for the campaign. Was he knocking on doors in Iowa? No, he was the White House National Security Adviser, and a foreign policy adviser throughout the campaign. Why is the administration trying so desperately to separate itself from these people who have deepening ties to Russia? Don't they also maintain the Russian business is all a "ruse"?

(This is to say nothing of longtime Trump adviser Roger Stone, who allegedly spoke to the Russian hacker, Guccifer 2.0, but claims they would "need a time machine to collude.")

All the while, this president is trying to nominate someone to the nation's highest court for the next 40 years. Meyers summed up the situation thusly: "We're in the unprecedented situation of a president trying to fill a stolen Supreme Court seat while under the cloud of an FBI investigation. If the shoe were on the other foot, the Republicans would stonewall for four years."

Will the Democrats? Don't hold your breath.

Jack Holmes Politics Editor Jack Holmes is the Politics Editor at Esquire, where he writes daily and edits the Politics Blog with Charles P Pierce.

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