Midway through the Republican skit in the Gridiron Club's annual show, a Russian-speaking former Moscow correspondent took the stage as Vladimir Putin, regaling the audience with a bilingual description of how "We fix election, so Trump can win."

The Sunday audience, composed primarily of Gridironers' journalistic colleagues, friends and family members, loved it. But officials and executives at Washington's oldest journalistic organization's formal white tie dinner Saturday night greeted Rick Smith's tour de force with distinctly less enthusiasm. This may reflect the difficulty Republicans have in laughing at themselves or perhaps the fact many may no longer think the Putin-Trump relationship is a laughing matter.

If there was any doubt, President Donald Trump's over-the-top weekend tweet storm charging without evidence that former President Barack Obama "had my 'wires tapped' in Trump Tower" was a sign the continual focus and expanding investigations are getting under the president's skin. While utilizing a strong offense as the best defense is his standard modus operandi, Trump's accusation was so outrageous FBI Director James Comey urged the Justice Department to refute it.

This story has been simmering since mid-summer when the first articles documented the potential financial relationship between Trump and the Russians, a relationship Trump has steadfastly denied in a series of inconsistent statements.

Beck Bennett portrays Russian President Vladimir Putin during the opening sketch on "Saturday Night Live," Saturday, Jan. 21, 2017, in New York. (Will Heath/NBC via AP) (AP)

The matter has three separate but interwoven tracks, some extending back several decades and some as recent as 2016. They are Trump's long romance with Russia, whether his family's business initiatives give the Russians leverage over him, and what, if anything, the Russians did to help him beat Hillary Clinton. Though the recent focus has been on the campaign, Trump's history may explain whatever happened.

Long before he got into politics, Trump was often on television touting better U.S.-Soviet relations.

"I think the Soviet Union is really making an effort to cooperate in the sense of dealing openly with other nations and in opening up the country," he once said, something that may have been truer then, under Mikhail Gorbachev, than today under Putin.

Since he wasn't in politics, it's reasonable to assume his motive was financial, gaining Soviet help to extend the reach of his various companies.

More recently, Trump has repeatedly said he "has nothing to do" with Russia. But at a 2008 conference, his son Donald Trump Jr. said "Russians make up a pretty disproportionate cross-section of a lot of our assets" around the world, adding, "We see a lot of money pouring in from Russia." He has never retracted those words, and his father's refusal to release his income tax returns helps shield the facts.

In 2016, Trump made repeated pro-Russian comments at odds with traditional Republican hardline attitudes, favorably comparing Putin's leadership to Barack Obama's. He also questioned if the United States should defend NATO countries that don't pay a fair share of their bills.

At the Republican convention, his operatives removed platform references to arming Ukraine in its fight against Kremlin-backed, pro-Russia rebels. Last week, retracting prior denials, a Trump campaign representative, J.D. Gordon, told CNN "Donald Trump himself wanted and advocated for" that change.

U.S. intelligence agencies have concluded the Russians sought to help Trump in last year's campaign by undermining Clinton, who had criticized Putin's denial of civil liberties. For Trump, the most dangerous aspect is whether his campaign was complicit in those efforts. It's being examined by the Justice Department and the two congressional intelligence committees.

Suspiciously, some Trump officials have had trouble getting their stories straight about possible contacts with the Russians. National Security Adviser Michael Flynn was forced out after he lied to Vice President Mike Pence about a conversation with the Russian ambassador. Much to Trump's annoyance, Attorney General Jeff Sessions had to recuse himself from the probe after withdrawing his denial he had any contacts during the campaign with the Russians.

Instead of multiple probes, it would be far better to have one, either a joint congressional panel combining the House and Senate Intelligence Committees or appointment of a single special prosecutor. That would be up to the new deputy attorney general, Rod Rosenstein. Neither seems likely.

Meanwhile, despite its serious nature, the Trump-Putin relationship continues to provide comic fodder, on late night TV and at events like Gridiron.

Before Rick Smith's song, House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi greeted administration representatives "in a way they're more familiar with: Nasdrovia," the Russian word for cheers. Sen. Joni Ernst, the Republican speaker, said she hoped her speech would be shorter than Flynn's NSA tenure.

But Pence, representing the administration, avoided Russia or any direct hits on his boss, even though he is the one top official Trump CAN'T fire.

Carl P. Leubsdorf is the former Washington bureau chief of The Dallas Morning News and a frequent columnist. Email:carl.p.leubsdorf@gmail.com