A lot of us are rightly outraged, or at the very least bemused, that the House Republicans have shut down their intelligence committee investigation into Russian election interference in 2016.

It’s pretty hilarious to me that the GOP declared that there’s been no evidence of collusion between Trump and Russia, but that certain Trump campaign associates used bad judgment, or whatever the hell deflection they’re using to describe the, you know, collusion, between the Trump campaign and Russia. I mean, Robert Mueller has secured more than a dozen indictments, and his investigation isn’t closing, nor is the Senate’s. It’s fascinating to me that the House Republicans want America to ignore the considered opinion of the U.S. intelligence community and focus only on their narrowly worded exoneration of the president.

I get it, I’m skeptical of the CIA and the FBI because of their past history. But for Republicans to say that Russia didn’t want to help Trump win, only to sow chaos is just…too much for words. We know from Donald Trump Jr’s own emails, which he tried to release to get out from under a bombshell New York Times article, that he went into a meeting with Russian lawyers looking for dirt. We know for a fact Trump, in public, dared Russian hackers to hack Hillary Clinton. For Chrissakes, that’s like if Nixon had ordered the Watergate break in during a state of the union address. Whether or not there was a long-term, concerted effort by Dotard J. Trump himself to collude with Russia isn’t the bar that’s set for a campaign colluding with a foreign country.

Considering that literally as I was writing this, another story broke that Roger Stone bragged to two friends about his communications with Wikileaks during 2016, and that Stone was a campaign adviser of Trump’s, it’s just preposterous of the Republicans to expect that people outside their base will stand for this. Sure, it’s a mid-term, and they’re not banking on losing the House, but these are the kinds of things can turn elections. They rile up angry dissenters, and they make them hell-bent on exacting a price from cynical politicians who put party ahead of country.

In the Senate, for now Republicans are not following their colleagues’ lead. The Senate investigation is intact, and still ongoing, just like Robert Mueller’s. Indeed, it looks like the House GOP is on an island, making their stand for their orange-tinted savior. The gall is quite breathtaking.

These are largely the same people who have harassed Hillary Clinton over the Benghazi attack for over half a decade now. The same people that spent millions and millions of dollars over the course of several years investigating and re-investigating something while hoping for newer, different results, are now telling us it’s time to just close up shop and go home with all this pesky Russia business. The nerve of people like Trey “Glistening Face” Gowdy and Darrell “Oops, Did I Drop That Match?” Issa hurrying us all along after checking Hillary’s stools for any Benghazi related dirty is just…too much, really, for words.

Maybe, at the end of it all, the House Republicans will be vindicated. Maybe when Mueller is done and the Senate wraps up there won’t be any evidence of any wrongdoing on Trump or his campaign’s parts. It’s far too early to close an investigation like this unless it’s only being closed for cynical political purposes…but c’mon, when have the Republicans ever been a bunch of feckless, hypocritical douchebags like that? I mean, besides for the last three or four decades.

If their guy is innocent, leaving the investigation open would have exonerated him. Instead, we get nothing but a purely political decision. It makes me wonder if we could have just managed to convince the intel committee that Russia did a Benghazi on our elections if we’d have gotten them committed to investigating it completely. Hell, there wasn’t even just one Benghazi investigation. There were more than half a dozen, run by two different congressmen. But, when it comes to an attack on our elections, where exactly are those same self-serving Republicans?

If only we could have made them think that Obama and Hillary were behind it all, maybe they’d still have the gumption to stand up for their country against an enemy’s attack…if only…

Of course, the truth is that Devin Nunes has been acting like a toady of Trump’s since day one of the investigation. Republicans have refused to subpoena any of the people who have been indicted like Paul Manafort, George Papodopoulos, or Carter Page. So it was pretty much a farce to begin with. I know that might not leave you with much hope, but that’s in short supply these days, so I’ll leave you with this GIF, which I hope is enough to make up for being such a downer.