Various toads and lackeys are lining up now to sacrifice what's left of their integrity in service to the mad king. It is an incredible spectacle to watch grown men—almost entirely white male Boomers with long careers in public life—debase themselves to defend a man in obvious cognitive decline with an extensive track record of backstabbing the toads and lackeys who came before them. Apparently, Republican loyalists in Congress and beyond are under the impression that Donald Trump will be president forever, or at least, that there will be no consequences for having been a collaborator if and when this disgraceful assault on the American republic comes to an end. Unfortunately, they're probably right. Just ask Star Who Was Danced With Sean Spicer.

The newest clown in the circus is Trey Gowdy, the Benghazi supersleuth who has run through a truly incredible selection of abominable hairdos. According to the AP, he's joining a Trumpian legal squad that is now engaged in an apocalyptic battle against the United States Constitution. The crack team released a letter Tuesday night that, in between spewing bits of MAGA brainspittle about Schifty Schiff and The Whistleblower, essentially argued that there is no valid mechanism for holding the president accountable. He cannot be indicted because the Department of Justice says a sitting president cannot be indicted. He cannot be impeached, a mechanism expressly laid out in the Constitution as a remedy for presidential misconduct, because durr, it would overturn the results of an election. Never mind that Mike Pence would become president if Trump were removed. None of this is relevant. There is incredibly strong evidence that he broke the law. He must be held accountable or he will continue breaking the law.

So Mr. Gowdy is joining a legal team whose expressed position is that the Executive Branch will not cooperate in any way with an impeachment inquiry in the House of Representatives. The king has decided he's not interested in being impeached, so he'll just pretend it isn't happening. They will ignore subpoenas. They will block witnesses from testifying before Congress. They will argue in court that Congress has no oversight powers (!) over the Executive Branch. They will carry out this campaign of open-and-shut obstruction of justice under the renowned legal principle of, Fuck You, That's Why. And how does Gowdy feel about all this?

Ah, wait—that's Gowdy in 2012, when he was investigating Obammer and Hillary for doing Benghazi. In the time since, as he's aged gracefully and continued to cut his own hair, Gowdy has apparently decided that actually, the White House has no need to comply with congressional subpoenas or the law. What on earth could have changed? I suppose we could ask the same thing of Lindsey Graham.

All of this becomes a bit less confusing when you take into account that the Republican Party is the vehicle for an authoritarian movement whose defining principle is that anything is acceptable if it means holding onto power. You can say the exact opposite of what you used to say because this is now what benefits Dear Leader. You can allow your bathrobed king to run roughshod over the Constitution's separation of powers because it helps him get a Win on his Big, Beautiful Wall. You can say nothing when he weaponizes the Departments of Justice and State to pursue his personal interests. You can excuse it away when he openly solicits foreign interference in an American presidential campaign, because it could help your party retain control of the White House. You can try to stop Certain People from voting, or make their votes count for less, because it could help you retain control of Congress or state legislatures.

Anything is acceptable if it hurts your political enemies and keeps you in power. Anything. If that means excusing the president's virulent public racism, that's fine. If it means pretending he didn't just have one of his twice-weekly meltdowns on the White House lawn, that's what you gotta do. If it means letting kids die in the system of concentration camps we're running at the border, so be it. They will show the world just how far that goes if they are not met with the full force of the law and routed at the ballot box.

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.

This content is created and maintained by a third party, and imported onto this page to help users provide their email addresses. You may be able to find more information about this and similar content at piano.io