America’s democratic republic has survived wars, including a fratricidal civil war. It has survived plagues, floods, famines, wildfires, mudslides and two Reagan administrations. But, to be perfectly honest, if this Daily Beast story is accurate, I’m not entirely sure it can survive the Attack of the Moron Pundits.

As such, [Lou] Dobbs doesn’t get to just interview and socialize with the president; he is involved in some of the administration’s more sensitive discussions. During the first year of the Trump era, the president has patched in Dobbs via speakerphone to multiple meetings in the Oval Office so that he could offer his two cents, according to three sources familiar with these conversations. Trump will ask Dobbs for his opinion before and after his senior aides or Cabinet members have spoken. Occasionally, he will cut off an official so the Fox Business host can jump in. Dobbs, these sources all independently recounted, has been patched in to senior-level meetings on issues such as trade and tax policy—meetings that featured officials such as senior policy adviser Stephen Miller, former top economic adviser Gary Cohn, former chief strategist Steve Bannon, trade adviser Peter Navarro, and Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin.

The president* gets every day off to a flying stupid by enjoying Executive Time with the Fox News morning show, Three Dolts On A Divan. Now, we discover that Lou Dobbs, a man whose trolley departed the tracks and flew into a sun a decade ago, has been calling into policy discussions.

We made jokes about government-by-talk-show for a long time in 2015 and 2016. Those jokes are now not funny any more. It’s only a matter of time before Cabinet meetings are interrupted by commercials for hair-loss products and auto glass.

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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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