Welcome to a brief return to our old favorite, What Are The Gobshites Saying These Days? On Sunday, my man Chuck Todd, searching desperately for a way out of the Sarlacc pit, hosted Kellyanne Conway, who ran out the clock on him with this amazing 78-r.p.m. coup de grace.

Oh no, no. General Mattis has denied what is in that book and is attributed to him. And I want everybody to read his denial and his affirmation. And there's a reason that people like General Mattis and General Kelly are serving this president. They don't need to be here. They much -- they very much believe in the agenda, in a strong military and peace through strength, in trying to bring denuclearization. Getting out of the wrong-headed Iran deal. Benjamin Netanyahu in his Rosh Hashanah message is crediting this president for being a great partner. This president kept a promise of -- kicked out a Nazi. Kicked out a Nazi that other presidents refused to.

Keep that boldfaced line in mind as we go along. Anyway, my man Chuck Todd somehow escaped this avalanche of breathless bushwah enough to interview both Dick Durbin and Twitter Resistance Commando Ben Sasse, who, until he actually does something about the current state of affairs, should keep the sacred name of Schoolhouse Rock out of his mouth. (And, not for nothing, but when you preface a question with, "Well, Meghan McArdle wrote the following about you...", you have left the rails far behind.)

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Then my man Chuck Todd convened a panel to discuss the events of the week. I was only about half-listening, and then I heard Danielle Pletka talking about all those patriotic moles who are subverting the constitutional order for the purposes of keeping El Caudillo Del Mar-A-Lago from starting the next world war. This is what she said.

The problem here is what you just said, which is you're afraid and yet you're glad these guys are there. You know, if we are willing to accept that Kelly and Mattis and Pompeo and others, John Bolton, are responsible adults who have good morals and good moral standing and are here to do the right thing and serve their country, then we don't need to be afraid.

Wait. Who is a responsible adult with good morals? John Freaking Bolton, the bloodthirsty maniac who's been hungering to turn Tehran into a glass parking lot for over a decade?

The guy who said this about North Korea?

"Pre-emption opponents argue that action is not justified because Pyongyang does not constitute an ‘imminent threat.’ They are wrong. The threat is imminent, and the case against pre-emption rests on the misinterpretation of a standard that derives from prenuclear, pre-ballistic-missile times."

The guy who helped sell the monstrous lies that led us into Iraq and then, when everything he'd said was exposed as being utterly dishonest, replied:

“I still think the decision to overthrow Saddam was correct. I think decisions made after that decision were wrong, although I think the worst decision made after that was the 2011 decision to withdraw U.S. and coalition forces.”

You first, Mighty Mouse. Oh, I'm sorry. Like so many think-tank Napoleons, when the bell tolled for you, you jumped into the Army Reserve and later wrote in your Yale reunion book that you, "had no desire to die in a Southeast Asian rice paddy. I considered the war in Vietnam already lost."

Mark Wilson Getty Images

Anyway, Christmas Past, right? Now that he's the National Security Adviser, he has found a way to temper his diplomatic sociopathy for the good of the country, right? Right? Hello? Is this on? Hello? From The Wall Street Journal:

The Trump administration is expected to announce Monday that it will close the Palestine Liberation Organization’s office in Washington, administration officials said Sunday night, widening a U.S. campaign of pressure amid stalled Middle East peace efforts.

No wonder Bibi's such a fan. But Bolton isn't done living his dream. He's flexing at the members of the International Criminal Court in The Hague.

“If the court comes after us, Israel or other allies, we will not sit quietly,” Mr. Bolton planned to say, according to his prepared remarks. Among the responses, Mr. Bolton says, the U.S. would ban ICC judges and prosecutors from entering the country. “We will sanction their funds in the U.S. financial system, and we will prosecute them in the U.S. criminal system,” Mr. Bolton adds. “We will do the same for any company or state that assists an ICC investigation of Americans.”

This is lunacy. If the ICC sanctions Israel for, say, shooting a Palestinian teenager in the back without cause, Bolton plans to charge its members in the United States criminal court? What, pray tell, would be the charge? I look forward to Bolton's serving warrants on say, Doctors Without Borders, or Amnesty International, or, hell, Switzerland, for providing evidence to the ICC or for supporting its efforts. Bolton essentially is claiming the right to charge anyone anywhere in the world with treason against the United States.

He's as nutty as he ever was, so no, Danielle, his proximity to the president* does not reassure me at all.

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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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