Last May, Donald Trump acknowledged in a TV interview that he fired FBI Director James Comey just to stonewall a criminal investigation.

One month later, the president ordered the firing of Robert Mueller, while the Special Counsel was busy securing two guilty pleas and two indictments of the president's senior staff.

Last week, it was reported that Trump is preparing to sack Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein - the only man who can sack Mueller - by using cherry-picked facts from a classified memo produced by the House Intelligence Committee.

And on Monday, after one year of relentless taunting from Trump, Deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe was forced out.

That's two down with two in the crosshairs, which means the president has fired or tried to fire four people in charge of the Russia investigation - essentially, a Saturday Night Massacre that has spilled into Sunday, a purge of tormentors by a man who hears the branch creak.

But this is not only about the human temper tantrum in the Oval Office.

It is about his useful idiots in Congress, and how deeply they feel about the rule of law.

Spoiler alert: not so much.

As the president corrupts the justice system, Republicans in Congress continue to torpedo the Mueller investigation with mendacity and zeal. And no matter what it exposes about Trump - whether it's collusion with Russia to rig an election, an affection for freshly laundered money, or an obstruction of justice - the president's enablers are committed to discrediting Mueller and the FBI until the bitter end.

This is what your government looks like when it's being dropped into the wood chipper. The majority party no longer cares about a foreign adversary manipulating our democracy; instead, it undermines the investigation trying to prevent it from recurring.

This is why Mueller needs protection from further Trump interference, and it looks less likely that it will come from a Republican majority that has as many traitors as patriots.

Two bipartisan bills that would shield Mueller from Trump were drafted last fall, including one cosponsored by Sens. Cory Booker and Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) that would require judicial review to fire Mueller, but both have stalled.

Graham, whose budding devotion for Trump has a Stockholm Syndrome vibe to it, has lost his enthusiasm for it. He said last weekend that "it's pretty clear to me that everybody in the White House knows it would be the end of President Trump's presidency if he fired Mr. Mueller," which was assuring, before concluding that he sees "no evidence that Mr. Trump wants to fire Mr. Mueller now."

Just like the captain of the Titanic saw no evidence of an encroaching iceberg.

Meanwhile, Trump has brain-jacked the rest of the party.

He trots out Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wisc.) to rail about some anti-Trump "secret society" within the FBI - which is, as Joe Scarborough describes it, "a reckless slur from a pathetic lackey."

He uses Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.), whom the hometown Fresno Bee calls an "embarrassing stooge," to hyperventilate about the memo that details alleged FISA abuse by Rosenstein - which the Justice Department resists making public despite a growing #ReleaseTheMemo Twitter campaign driven by, what else, Russian bots.

Rosenstein may not last the week, and since Mitch McConnell or Paul Ryan show no interest in exercising any Article 1 authority, anything goes after that.

You'd think they would at least notice that this administration announced it would not impose sanctions against Russia Monday, after CIA Director Mike Pompeo predicted more meddling in the 2018 midterms.

They simply have other priorities. A nation of laws is having its skin peeled off, with the ruling majority in lockstep stooge-ism - protecting the president from scrutiny, exposure, and consequences.

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