How long until they say "collusion is good"? The over-under is probably around five weeks. Things are moving fast now, but do not lose sight of a few details. Donald Trump, American president, has repeatedly and unequivocally said there was "no collusion." Often, he has done so via ALL CAPS PRESIDENTIAL TWEET. The subtext, of course, is that conspiring with agents of a foreign power to get elected is bad, so you wouldn't want it on your resumé. In fact, Trump and his associates repeatedly denied that anyone in the campaign had contacts with Russians of any kind. That was a gobsmacking lie, many times over. Just look at his onetime campaign manager, Paul Manafort, who sent Trump campaign polling data to Konstantin Kilimnick, a suspected member of Russian intelligence, during the 2016 election.

Now we've learned the FBI opened a counterintelligence investigation into whether Trump himself was a Russian agent, and that Trump has sought to conceal what he spoke about with Russian President Vladimir Putin at all five of their bilateral meetings. In one case, he seized his translator's notes and instructed them not to brief other administration officials on what was discussed. Gee, I wonder why? Based on their public interactions, they're such great chums!

Garrett Graff suggested in Wired this Thursday morning that the less embarrassing explanation for the United States president's behavior is that he's a Russian agent. The truly embarrassing reason for it would be that he suffers from crippling narcissism that makes him a useful idiot, because he is willing to destroy American democratic institutions in an impulsive search for ego-reinforcement. These might not actually be mutually exclusive.



Either way, we are steadily headed towards a world where the American president's position is, Yeah, I conspired with the Russian oligarchs to get elected, but it's better than Hillary! In the meantime, you can expect various intermediate movings-of-the-goal-posts, like: Yeah, my campaign conspired with the Russian oligarchs to get me elected, but I wasn't directly involved! That's what Trump's genius brain lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, debuted on Chris Cuomo's CNN show last night:

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The president's lawyer no longer denies that his campaign colluded with the Russians.

Some have already floated the hypothesis that Rudy is trying to get ahead of some catastrophic news coming down the pike. That may well be true, but it doesn't change the simple fact that Trump's campaign manager appears to have been deeply in bed with Russia's oligarchy. This is a serious problem whether Trump was involved or not. It does not just call into question his judgment, which is obviously atrocious, but could in itself undermine the legitimacy of his election. Here Giuliani denied Manafort's sharing of campaign data with a suspected Russian intelligence operative was collusion, even as Cuomo pointed out that both sides came to the same conclusion about where to target their activities. Then, when that failed, America's Mayor went back to the idea Trump wasn't directly involved.

And you know it's not going to end here. Aaron Blake at the Washington Post counted 10 times that Team Trump has watered down its collusion denials, making them more and more equivocal and even contradicting previous positions. The Trumpist who called for disbanding the FBI on Fox News this week apparently wrote in his even-handed survey of this issue, The Russia Hoax, that "even if the Trump campaign had acted on information allegedly offered by the Russian lawyer, it would still not constitute treason. Conspiring to subvert the government does not rise to the level of treason." What the hell is this guy's definition of treason? Using a private email account?

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These people are authoritarians. They believe anything is justified if it keeps their people in power—even if it means getting in bed with the oligarchs and thugs who meddled in our elections. Senate Republicans demonstrated this yesterday with their sign-off on the Treasury Department lifting sanctions on companies tied to Oleg Deripaska—Putin's right-hand oligarch who has extensive ties to Paul Manafort. It's not actually that far a leap from gerrymandering and voter suppression and stuffing the judiciary full of partisan goons to accepting help from some nice Russian blokes. When you've given up on appealing to an actual majority of American voters because you're married to policies like cutting taxes on the rich and letting industrial firms do as they wish with the water supply, you've got to find enterprising ways to stay in power. Apparently racism was no longer enough.

Oh, and by the fucking way, Trump has not just said "no collusion." He specifically said there was no collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia, on-camera, on at least three different occasions:

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Giuliani blew a gasket on @CuomoPrimeTime insisting that Trump never said his campaign didn't collude with the Russians.



Video: 3 times he said exactly that.



(h/t @atrupar, who you should follow because he's great.)#ThursdayThoughts #ThursdayMotivationpic.twitter.com/p7WM2j4CpM — Holly Figueroa O'Reilly (@AynRandPaulRyan) January 17, 2019

So Giuliani, another proud American patriot, is not just moving the goal posts but using deception to do it. Giuliani himself has denied campaign collusion, but more importantly, his client has publicly denied it time after time. They lied about this and everything else. What will they lie about next? And what will they tell you is acceptable in order to keep Certain People out of power?

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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