Some days, I am stumped by the answer to what always has been the central question of the Trump Era in our politics.

Just how stupid does he think we are?

And the inevitable corollary.

Just how stupid do they think we are?

As to the first, we have this ridiculous folk dance with the leak of the alleged questions that Robert Mueller was prepared to ask the president* if and when they sit down together. (I’d like to get an oddsmaker to calculate which is the longer long shot: Trump meeting Mueller or Trump meeting Kim Jong-un. I know where my money would be.) From The New York Times:

The open-ended queries appear to be an attempt to penetrate the president’s thinking, to get at the motivation behind some of his most combative Twitter posts and to examine his relationships with his family and his closest advisers. They deal chiefly with the president’s high-profile firings of the F.B.I. director and his first national security adviser, his treatment of Attorney General Jeff Sessions and a 2016 Trump Tower meeting between campaign officials and Russians offering dirt on Hillary Clinton.

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But they also touch on the president’s businesses; any discussions with his longtime personal lawyer, Michael D. Cohen, about a Moscow real estate deal; whether the president knew of any attempt by Mr. Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, to set up a back channel to Russia during the transition; any contacts he had with Roger J. Stone Jr., a longtime adviser who claimed to have inside information about Democratic email hackings; and what happened during Mr. Trump’s 2013 trip to Moscow for the Miss Universe pageant.

Briefly, there was some confusion as to whom this obviously strategic leak was supposed to benefit. That mystery did not last long. The questions weren’t out there for long before, with the remarkably transparent conniving that has been the hallmark of his entire career, as well as with the unshakable belief that he is the world’s smartest human, the president* proceeded to leap onto the electric Twitter machine to give his own game away.

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So disgraceful that the questions concerning the Russian Witch Hunt were “leaked” to the media. No questions on Collusion. Oh, I see...you have a made up, phony crime, Collusion, that never existed, and an investigation begun with illegally leaked classified information. Nice! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 1, 2018

Nobody could possibly figure out this clever web of clever cleverness.

The leak was incredibly damaging to the president*’s case anyway. (Because he is not a fool, Mueller had to know the questions would leak from somewhere as soon as he threw them into the maw of the president*’s crack legal team.) If nothing else, it’s almost certain that Mueller knows the answer to all the questions on the list and a helluva lot more. In any case, if this slick move was supposed to make the president* look like the victim of Deep State hocus-pocus, it did exactly the opposite. Which is to be expected.

Not to be outdone, the Freedom Caucus, the claque of wingnut dementors who hold the balance of power in the House of Representatives, checked in with a threat to impeach Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein as a “last resort.” From The Washington Post:

The document, which was obtained by The Washington Post, underscores the growing chasm between congressional Republican leaders, who have maintained for months that Special Counsel Robert Mueller should be allowed to proceed, and rank-and-file GOP lawmakers who have repeatedly battled the Justice Department during the past year ...

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... The draft criticizes Rosenstein's disclosure of materials related to a classified surveillance warrant application and subsequent renewals targeting former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page. Conservatives have alleged the Justice Department acted inappropriately because the department relied on information in its warrant applications that was funded by Clinton's presidential campaign. The warrants were approved by multiple judges.

The conservatives' outline, which is divided into eight parts, focuses on Rosenstein and surveillance matters in the first three articles. The document asserts that the veteran Justice Department official "engaged in a pattern of conduct incompatible with the trust and confidence placed in him" in his dealings with Congress and "failed to enforce multiple laws" in the warrant process. The draft also states that Rosenstein "knowingly provided misleading statements" during congressional testimony about steps the federal government took to investigate Russian interference in the 2016 election.

This doesn’t look like the move you make when you know the president* of your party is an innocent man. And the complicated process involved in impeaching a federal official is hard enough when you have cause, which these clowns clearly do not. Being Mean To The President* is not an impeachable offense, at least not to anyone not wearing the official blazer of the Freedom Caucus, the one with the arms that tie in the back. But they think the country is dumb enough not to see that, either.

Meanwhile, the burlesque show rolls on, and beloved minor characters make sudden reappearances at just the right moment. From NBC News:

In an exclusive interview in his Park Avenue office, Bornstein told NBC News that he felt "raped, frightened and sad" when Keith Schiller and another "large man" came to his office to collect the president's records on the morning of Feb. 3, 2017. At the time, Schiller, who had long worked as Trump's bodyguard, was serving as director of Oval Office operations at the White House. "They must have been here for 25 or 30 minutes. It created a lot of chaos," Bornstein said, who described the incident as frightening.A framed 8x10 photo of Bornstein and Trump that had been hanging on the wall in the waiting room now lies flat under a stack of papers on the top shelf of Bornstein's bookshelf. Bornstein said the men asked him to take it off the wall.

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Bornstein said he was not given a form authorizing the release of the records and signed by the president known as a HIPAA release — which is a violation of patient privacy law. A person familiar with the matter said there was a letter to Bornstein from then-White House doctor Ronny Jackson, but didn't know if there was a release form attached.

My biggest concern is that the fundamental question—How stupid does he think we are?—is morphing into a more serious one: How scared are they of me? The hell of it is, I think that one most appeals to him. What's unnerving to me is that the answer to both questions might be the same.

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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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