These are dark days for the American republic. The only thing standing between us and an unfinishable border wall emblazoned with giant gold letters is a woman whose legendary powers of discernment have given us Whitewater, Benghazi, and E-mail-gate.

And, based on a new documentary sure to register somewhere between setback and minor disaster for the Hillary Clinton campaign, her closest aide isn’t exactly a paragon of good judgment, either.

Clinton herself isn’t featured in Weiner, which premieres in theaters this weekend and on Showtime later this year, but her right-hand woman, Huma Abedin—whom she once likened to her second daughter—sure is. And it would be hard to find a more apropos stand-in for the serially cuckolded Secretary Clinton than Abedin, who is repeatedly forced to swallow her pride, rage, and who knows what else in a grim effort to stand by her husband, Anthony Weiner, candidate for mayor of New York City.

The question is: Why did Abedin agree to let filmmakers Elyse Steinberg and Josh Kriegman film every intimate detail of her husband’s quixotic mayoral campaign, even though it was pretty obvious that the whole thing would end in humiliation?

It’s clear enough why Weiner signed up for the film. He’s a consummate politician—one part policy nerd, one part scrappy fighter, at least two parts rampaging narcissist. At the outset of the race, he truly believed that he could overcome the national scandal that had erupted two years earlier, when Weiner, then a congressman, accidentally tweeted a picture of his underpants instead of D.M.-ing it to a social-media “pen pal.” At first, Weiner tried to pretend that he’d been hacked, but soon enough he was forced to admit the truth. The episode ended with Weiner resigning from Congress, at the behest of none other than President Barack Obama.

Running for mayor was supposed to be an act of redemption for a tough-tawking, liberal Democrat whose rough edges must have seemed a better fit for City Hall than they had been for the House of Representatives. However misplaced his confidence, it’s clear enough why he’d have wanted his comeback to be documented for posterity.

Unfortunately, when another batch of explicit images surface weeks before the mayoral primary election, Weiner becomes a horror movie, with Huma as the victim and Weiner’s hubris as the monster destroying everything in its path.

The crazy thing is, Weiner and Huma apparently knew that more images would surface. (They say they did, anyway.)

So, why, oh, why did Huma agree? One possibility, judging from the numerous scenes in the film where Weiner genially bullies his wife into submission, is that she felt she had no other choice. More than once, the camera pans from Weiner’s yapping mouth to Huma’s face as it morphs from defeated resignation to schoolkid eye-roll. Her expression seems to say, “See what I have to deal with?” The audience can’t help but think, “Do you really have to, though?”

Yes, Weiner and Abedin have a small child—she was pregnant when the first scandal broke. That is a reason to keep your marriage together. It’s also arguably a reason not to put yourself through a media meat grinder, all the while allowing documentary filmmakers to trail your whole family.

So, honestly, what gives? Why would Huma Abedin—one of the most intelligent, glamorous, well-positioned individuals in the United States; a woman who is entirely likely to serve as chief of staff or better to our next president—extend this invitation to mortification?