Hey, Generals Kelly and McMaster. You guys had stellar careers in the military. Now, though, you're reduced to being human shields for a truthless president* who's represented in public by a doltish flack with no life in his eyes. How's that doing by you guys, anyway?

Sean Spicer came back to the briefing room on Tuesday after two weeks of pope-free exile while his boss was overseas blowing up international relations. Naturally, there were many questions about the administration's entanglements with Russia and, specifically, about Jared Kushner, and The Dauphin's reported request to the Russians that he be allowed to use their extra-top-secret hamburger phone to talk to god-knows-who about god-knows-what without American intelligence being able to hear what's being discussed.

Apparently, Spicer had himself a big bowl of Wheaties every day during his sabbatical, because he came out dealing transparent mendacity with more than his usual gusto. I mean, when he talked about the president*'s deep commitment to human rights, I thought I'd been punched in the head. Donald Trump has no more concern for human rights than he does for personal boundaries. But Spicer sold it hard.

He was particularly truculent on the subject of the Dauphin and Russia. Some background: On Monday, Fox News, quoted a "source familiar with the matter"—and likely not named Heave Hannon—to the effect that the so-called "back-channel" had been requested by the White House, and not by the Dauphin himself. On Tuesday morning, the president* naturally retweeted this anonymously sourced report as a kind of vindication. When asked about the Washington Post report that revealed the overture in the first place, with the president*'s retweet clearly in the news, Spicer naturally questioned the reliability of…anonymous sources.

"I think that assumes a lot. Your question presupposes facts that have not been confirmed."

In a later exchange with Peter Baker of The New York Times, Spicer went long on the concept of "fake news," which is now the label hung by the president* and his cultists on any story they don't like. This is the hammer, and the media is the nail. Any time anyone asked about the wisdom of letting the Dauphin speak to the Russians on their communications set up, Spicer ducked behind comments that Kelly and McMaster had made over the weekend. They must be so proud.

It may have escaped your attention, but somebody shot out the windows of The Lexington Herald-Leader on Monday night. About which Kentucky's Tea Party governor, Matt Bevin, meeped:

"It's irresponsible and inappropriate… Any kind of behavior of that sort against any individual or an organization is wrong. Period…But let's get the facts before we overreact. Too often there is a lot of innuendo and hypothesis and people start to react to that."

Bevin, who has been critical of coverage by the Herald-Leader and the Courier-Journal of Louisville in the last week, added: "We should find out who is responsible and they should be held accountable for it."

This is a guy, mind you, who got up at the Values Voters hootenanny last September and suggested that bloodshed might be necessary to save America from a Hillary Rodham Clinton presidency. But let's all remain calm when actual bullets are fired through the windows of a newspaper he doesn't like.

Look, nobody gets into journalism necessarily to be popular. In my time, I have been the subject of tirades from state legislators and from long relief pitchers. Unpleasant confrontation is a part of the job. But this situation today is different. I was at those rallies when candidate Trump came right up to the edge of inciting his crowds to attack the press pens in the back of the room. The drumbeat of "fake news" from the highest office in the land is merely the high-rent version of those rallies. And it is having an effect out in the country. It is empowering ignorance and violence. It is encouraging mindless and pointless division. And it is handing people an easy way around acknowledging the fact that they handed the country over to a real-estate swindler and his family of grifthounds. It gives those people another target. And that's dangerous.

Oh, by the way? Chris Cillizza of CNN is a meathead for tweeting this out.

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Did you spend a second over Memorial Day weekend thinking of Greg Gianforte's choke slam?



Me neither. Which means Republicans bet right. — Chris Cillizza (@CillizzaCNN) May 30, 2017

What the rest of us don't need right now is a glorified racetrack tout going for yuks and, as usual, failing miserably.

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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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