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Slick Ben Sasse, Republican senator from Nebraska, dropped by the MSNBC Morning Zoo crew on Tuesday. (Slick Ben Sasse has a new book to plug about how to raise the young 'uns so they grow up strong and good and go to Harvard, Oxford, and Yale the way Slick Ben Sasse did, once he "got out of the fields." Yeah, he really said that. Watch out for this guy.) Slick Ben Sasse was also on the show to demonstrate how very concerned he was that the Oval Office is now under the control of the management firm of Bleat, Babble, and Burble. Slick Ben Sasse slickly avoided taking any actual stands until David Ignatius asked him flat-out if, by handing over classified material to his good pals from the Kremlin, the president* had violated his oath of office.

Slick Ben Sasse said something about "Washington."

So, yeah, he's useless.

(Also, note to Morning Joe: the "Trump is a Democrat" trope makes you look really stupid. He was nominated by the most loyal Republicans in all of Republicanland, and they are the only people currently sustaining him in office. Also, as regards preserving and protecting, may I remind everyone that the sterling silver hero of modern Republicans sold missiles to Iran? Thank you.)

We are not going to get anything out of these people except furrowed brows, well-stroked chins, and Expressions of Deep Concern. And, for all the talk about how this whole mess is going to cause the president*'s agenda to "grind to a halt," the Republican majorities in the Congress are still moving to gut the protections of the Affordable Care Act. Interestingly, all those parts of what is laughingly called this administration's "agenda" that coincide with what the Republicans have wanted to do for a decade seem to be going swimmingly.

As long as that's happening, what motive do any of them have to rein in a president* who seems to be an unprecedented mixture of narcissism, ignorance, and encroaching dementia? Especially if that means having the flying monkeys unleashed upon you all over the Intertoobz.

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For example, all it would take actually to rein in the president* would be to have Slick Ben Sasse and two other members of the Senate's Deeply Troubled caucus to agree to vote with the Democratic minority until Camp Runamuck gets itself together. That would be a signifying way to grind things to an actual halt. But none of them are going to do that, because they all have bigger fish to fry at the moment than the security of the country.

One of the more piquant moments of Tuesday morning was the fact that, even as Slick Ben Sasse was disappearing into comfortable ambivalence, the president* got a hold of his phone again and essentially tossed H.R. McMaster into the massive pigpile currently under the bus. Slick Ben Sasse had very little to say about this, and what he had to say was approximately 10 miles beside the point. He is going to be no help at all. It's up to the country now to shame them 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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