No one expects much from United States senators these days, particularly as the chamber's majority caucus finishes the job of debasing itself before the nation and the world in defense of Donald Trump, American president. Republicans led by Mitch McConnell have blocked the addition of new evidence and witnesses that could shed more light on Trump's behavior with respect to Ukraine, as if to formally announce that they do not care about corruption or whether the president undermined national security. They have done Fox News hits while the trial is in progress. They've scarcely batted an eye as Trump's legal defenders have embarked on a phantasmagorical festival of lies, which culminated yesterday in a recitation on the Senate floor of the grand unified conspiracy theory about Joe Biden.

There were a number of shameless moments therein, not least when one of Donald Trump's lawyers wondered aloud, "Can you imagine what House manager Schiff and his Democratic representatives would say if it were President Trump's children on an oligarch's payroll?" Yes, just imagine. But Senator Joni Ernst of Iowa, who is locked in a tough reelection fight and decided her best strategy is to pledge undying fealty to the president, decided to make the Trump legal team look like distinguished arbiters of the Constitution and the law by comparison. Ernst found a microphone bank outside the chamber and absolutely smashed the ball into her own goal.

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ERNST: "IA caucuses are this next Monday evening. And I'm really interested to see how this discussion today informs and influences the Iowa caucus voters, those Demcaucus goers. Will they be supporting VP Biden at this point?"



H/T @JaxAlemany pic.twitter.com/tYYkSPuIDY — Alan He (@alanhe) January 28, 2020

Wait, I thought this was about corruption? Nepotism? Foreign policy?

This country deserves a better class of ratfucker. You're supposed to smear your opponent for political gain and then deny any knowledge of the whole thing while reaping the benefits. You're not supposed to admit that you are now an accessory to the president's extended efforts to make Burisma (2020) the sequel to The Emails (2016). The president was so desperate for a Biden scandal on which right-wing media could feast, at which point The New York Times could Report on the Controversy, that he subverted American foreign policy for his personal political gain. He attempted to extort a foreign government into attacking American democracy and got himself impeached in the bargain.

None of that stopped Ernst from trumpeting that all this Biden-Ukraine talk is just about hurting his political campaign, however. There are genuine questions about why Hunter Biden was sitting on Burisma's board, even if there's no evidence Joe Biden did anything improper. But Ernst just announced that Senate Republicans don't actually care about corruption, not that she really needed to say it outright. It's just political mud to be slung. There's also the hilarious notion attending all this that Donald Trump is an International Corruption Crusader who saw a Bat Signal in Ukraine and answered the call—while running The Great American Heist here at home.

Still, it's striking to hear it all laid out so directly. It speaks to the powerful cynicism of our age that Ernst thought spelling out the real plot was a big win. Just yesterday, the Fox & Friends were on television complaining that John Bolton's book will make the president's coverup more difficult. This also brings to mind Kevin McCarthy's notorious Benghazi fuck-up, when he was campaigning to be Speaker of the House in 2015 and gave away the game so conclusively on national television that his colleagues drafted Paul Ryan for the job.

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Benghazi, Republicans had been telling us, was about four Americans who died and whether there was a State Department failure to protect the embassy there. Whoops! Turns out it was just partisan politics—at least according to one of the top Republicans in the chamber investigating it. Perhaps partly due to McCarthy's faceplant—and the eight Republican investigations that failed to turn up any evidence of Clintonian misconduct—Benghazi was largely abandoned as an attack dog by the time 2016 ramped up in earnest, replaced by The Foundation and The Emails.

In a fitting signal of the party's continued decay, McCarthy is now the House Minority Leader. Ryan may have been a phony policy expert and an anarcho-capitalist slug, but even he had the political acumen to see the writing on the wall and pulled the ripcord before the 2018 midterms. McCarthy, and Ernst, represent the vanguard of a party wholly owned by Donald Trump, which continues to hemorrhage what was left of its "talent" and replace it with whoever's willing to join up at this point. They have no shame or ethics or even much competence, but they have pledged full-bore allegiance to The Leader. Even then, though, you'd think they could keep their mouth shut about what their real aims are when they peddle conspiracy theories in the United States Capitol.

Jack Holmes Politics Editor Jack Holmes is the Politics Editor at Esquire, where he writes daily and edits the Politics Blog with Charles P Pierce.

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