You know the Republicans are winning when Bill Maher turns his sourness level to Ten. He opened his HBO show Real Time by joking "The good news is the impeachment trial is almost over, the bad news is so as rule of law in America."

He ripped Sen. Lamar Alexander for voting against more witnesses. "He said he made his decision after wrestling with his conscience -- and pinning it to the mat!....Senators have taken an oath to protect Donald Trump, and that's just the way the Constitution is written."

BILL MAHER: So it’s a done deal. This is going to happen. Trump will be acquitted on Wednesday. Republicans have nothing left to do but dot the i’s, cross the t’s, and fuck the you. As always with Trump, nothing will happen to him except bigger slaps on the wrist from Melania. And in the future when he shoots somebody on Fifth Avenue, Mitch McConnell will be there to lick the blood off his shoes. We are officially living in a dictatorship, and not even one with good rail service.

The lecture resumed when he introduced his panel:

MAHER: I’m going to try not to cry during the show because we lost Democracy this week. I feel like I’m standing over a casket, and thinking: Hmm, I should have been nicer when it was alive. And I feel like whatever we are going to talk about tonight in a way is almost moot, we are going to talk about politics in Iowa and who's going to win, and I feel like we are actually talking about a world that doesn't exist anymore. We're in a post-democracy world. There is a different paradigm. You know, it's one thing we always knew Trump was corrupt, but this week we found out the Senate, the whole Senate's in on it. [Applause] Countries that become dictatorships, they still have a senate. Rome had a senate. Russia has a Duma, a parliament. They're there. It looks the same but it's not the same.

PS: MRC's Brent Baker tweeted this clip: