A prime example occurred last week when a fringe website called the Federalist reported that, just before a whistleblower filed a complaint about President Trump’s actions with Ukraine, the intelligence community inspector general had conveniently lowered his standards to allow hearsay. This claim was immediately echoed by all the usual suspects, including Trump himself. He tweeted: “WHO CHANGED THE LONG STANDING WHISTLEBLOWER RULES JUST BEFORE SUBMITTAL OF THE FAKE WHISTLEBLOWER REPORT?”

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Trump’s own inspector general had to clarify that, while the wording of a submission form had changed, the standards had remained the same — and that, in any case, the whistleblower had firsthand information. This will not, of course, stop this phantasmagoric claim from becoming an article of faith among the true believers. The Federalist’s editors, who took credit for forcing the New York Times to clarify a misleading article about Supreme Court Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh, issued no apology or correction for their own bungling.

Trump has an obvious motive to spread lies as a distraction from the 10 words (“I would like you to do us a favor though”) that have made his impeachment inevitable. What is truly terrifying is that the man with his finger on the nuclear button might actually believe this aliens-are-talking-through-my-fillings drivel.

Trump, after all, tried to pressure Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky not only to dig up dirt on Joe Biden but also to “get to the bottom of” reports that the Democratic National Committee’s server had wound up in Ukraine. Zelensky must have wondered what the hell Trump was talking about. Turns out that some inventive wing-nuts posit that CrowdStrike, the cybersecurity firm that identified the Russian hacking of the DNC, has a connection to Ukraine. Because, you see, its Russian-born co-founder is affiliated with a think tank whose donors include a Ukrainian billionaire’s foundation. Got that?

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If a friend came to me babbling about CrowdStrike and Ukraine, I’d recommend that he get professional care pronto. Yet Trump is not just yakking. He is enlisting the full resources of the U.S. government to validate this crackpot hypothesis in hopes of showing that the Russians didn’t really hack the DNC and that, therefore, he wasn’t really elected with Russian help.

The president is assisted in this disreputable endeavor not only by his own lawyer, Rudolph W. Giuliani, but also by the attorney general of the United States, William P. Barr. Barr has embroiled Italy, Australia, Britain and other U.S. allies in a wildly improper effort to demonstrate that the investigation of Trump’s campaign — conducted by his own department! — really was a “political witch hunt.” Somehow Trump and his lackeys are able to believe that special counsel Robert S. Mueller III was a political hit man and also cite him as their source for their (false) claim that the president was exonerated of collusion and obstruction of justice.

To see how pervasive illogic has become on the right, check out this Wall Street Journal op-ed by Michael B. Mukasey, a former federal judge and President George W. Bush’s attorney general. He wrongly writes that “the FBI took [CrowdStrike’s] word, instead of conducting its own examination, for the conclusion that the Russians had hacked the DNC.” He seems to believe it was really the Ukrainians, not the Russians, who interfered in the 2016 election because a Ukrainian journalist broke the story about former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort’s corrupt dealings in his country. For good measure, Mukasey maligns the whistleblower’s complaint, already validated by the inspector general (and by the rough transcript), as consisting of “whoppers” and “secondhand reports.” Mukasey is the one spreading “whoppers” when he denies that Trump asked Zelensky to investigate Biden as a “favor.”

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This is not a contributing editor to Breitbart talking. Mukasey is a pillar of the Republican legal establishment — just like Barr and Giuliani. All three men once enjoyed bipartisan respect. But, like much of the right, they have succumbed to a collective madness that leads them to embrace nonsensical conspiracy theories just like the president that they inexplicably venerate.

The rise of irrationality on the right is a deeply disturbing development that goes hand in hand with the right’s embrace of Trump’s authoritarianism. The willingness of so many Republicans to take leave of their senses rather than face the unpleasant facts about the president augurs poorly for our future. Will they become any saner once Trump is gone? I fear not.

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