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The most lasting memories I have of the president*'s public "episode" on Wednesday morning have nothing to do with that glorious moment when it looked like he and Jim Acosta were about to throw hands. No, the first lasting memory is that remarkable sequence in which he chided losing Republican candidates for not calling on him to help. They "didn't want the embrace," he said, and that was not at all creepy. It did, however, remind me of the lingo one usually hears on FBI wiretaps before the prosecution rests its case.

In fact, I ran it by Anthony Cardinale, the Official Blog Reference Attorney In Such Matters, and Anthony told me that the correct phrase in situations like that one is:

"Si sono rifiutati di baciargli la mano."

"They refused to kiss the hand."

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Later, though, the president* unlimbered this astonishing argument.

You know, I keep hearing about investigations fatigue. Like from the time — almost from the time I announced I was going to run, they’ve been giving us this investigation fatigue. It’s been a long time. They got nothing. Zero. You know why? Because there is nothing. But they can play that game, but we can play it better. Because we have a thing called the United States Senate. And a lot of very questionable things were done between leaks of classified information, and many other elements that should not have taken place. And all you’re going to do is end up in back and forth, and back and forth. And two years is going to go up, and we won’t have done a thing.

A lot of people have opined concerning the dismissal of Attorney General Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III to the effect that the president* expects the AG and the Department of Justice to be his personal defense attorneys. The name of his old friend, Roy Cohn, is even fouling the air once more.

But this is a different deal. Here, he seems to be saying that he expects the members of the Senate Majority to be his personal button men if the new Democratic majority in the House starts getting too close to home with their subpoenas. Those of us who took civics class once remember that the Senate is supposed to be an independent institution of government, but here is the president*, who would fail that class if it were offered to him today, dragooning Republican senators into the effort to cover his ample hindquarters.

Mark Wilson Getty Images

Surely, they would balk at this assignment as being contrary to their duties as senators and their oaths to serve only the Constitution. Let's see what Mitch McConnell, the leader of the Republican majority in the Senate, has to say about it. From The Hill:

The GOP leader warned House Democrats Wednesday that there would be political costs to pursuing Trump with investigations or legal efforts to obtain his tax records. “I remember when we tried it in the late ‘90s. We impeached President Clinton, his numbers went up and ours went down and we underperformed in the next election,” he said. “Democrats in the House will have to decide just how much presidential harassment is good strategy. I’m not so sure it will work for them.”

I keep waiting for some Republican senator—Young Ben Sasse, defender of civility and norms, perhaps—to bridle at the whole notion that the institution to which he was elected amounts to little more than a palace guard to a mad king. I keep waiting for this because I am an optimist who clearly belongs in the nervous hospital for a spell.

Seriously, though, this isn't partisan game-playing. This is the president* assuming that Republican senators will go tit-for-tat for him if the new Democratic majority in the other chamber gets too uppity, and the leader of the majority in the Senate implying that the White House can count on him, if needs be. Republics die because of things like this.

Jeff Flake and Ben Sasse, Republican Men of Principle Chip Somodevilla Getty Images

In 1974, upon the release of the "smoking gun" Oval Office tape, the Republican leadership in the Senate recognized its duty and sent a delegation to the White House to tell Richard Nixon that it was time to vacate the office he had despoiled. Even during the Clinton impeachment kabuki, the forms were followed. The Republicans in the House got their impeachment and a bipartisan vote in the Senate acquitted the president. Bill Clinton did not get up in public and tell the Democrats in the Senate that it was their duty to launch retaliatory investigations on his behalf. This job was left to Larry Flynt, if I recall correctly.

This is not a partisan matter. Republics die when things like this are blithely waved off as simply the ravings of an unhinged chief executive whose administration is being unspooled before his eyes. Cicero, forced back into the Senate by Marc Antony after the assassination of Julius Caesar in order to be present when measures he hated were being bulldozed through into law, saw this very clearly, and told the Roman Senate so.

In his first Phillipic, he thundered:

What reason had he then for endeavouring, with such bitter hostility, to force me into the senate yesterday? Was I the only person who was absent? Have you not repeatedly had thinner houses than yesterday? Or was a matter of such importance under discussion, that it was desirable for even sick men to be brought down? Hannibal, I suppose, was at the gates, or there was to be a debate about peace with Pyrrhus; on which occasion it is related that even the great Appius, old and blind as he was, was brought down to the senate-house.

The Republicans in the Congress are surrendering more than their consciences. They are surrendering the very freedom of their own minds.

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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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