(Optional Musical Accompaniment To This Post)

I hope you will pardon me if I schaden your freude just a little. I'll call you a cab so you won't have to drive home. HuffPost is our mixologist.

Just two weeks before Election Day, five Republicans ― Reps. Bob Dold (R-Ill.), Mike Coffman (R-Colo.), David Jolly (R-Fla.), John Katko (R-N.Y.) and Brian Fitzpatrick, a Pennsylvania Republican running for an open seat that's currently occupied by his brother ― contend that certain commercials paid for by the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee provide false or misleading information by connecting them to the GOP nominee. Trump is so terrible, these Republicans are essentially arguing, that tying them to him amounts to defamation.

If you're keeping score at home, El Caudillo del Mar-A-Lago has threatened to sue the women who are accusing him of assault, and also threatening to sue every media outlet with an audience greater than five. Now, Republican politicians are threatening to sue media outlets for defaming them by linking them too closely to the Republican nominee for president. This never happened to Nixon, for god's sake.

The DCCC ties Coffman to Trump by showing him questioning whether President Barack Obama was born in the United States. (Coffman's lawyer takes issue with the ad's assertion that his client supports Trump, which is sourced to a February report in which Coffman said he'd support the eventual Republican nominee. Yet there's a lengthy record of Coffman criticizing Trump.) Coffman, who sent two letters over two different ads, also takes issue with a second ad stating that "Coffman said he'd support Trump for president." Coffman's lawyer says that claim is "false and defamatory," an indication of just how damaging supporting Trump can be in Coffman's Latino-heavy district.

This news comes just as we learn—from our old boss, Marty Baron, on the electric Twitter machine—that the American Bar Association actually takes Trump's legal onanism seriously enough to chicken out on its own research. Via The New York Times:

The report concluded that Mr. Trump was a "libel bully" who had filed many meritless suits attacking his opponents and had never won in court. But the bar association refused to publish the report, citing "the risk of the A.B.A. being sued by Mr. Trump." David J. Bodney, a former chairman of the media-law committee, said he was baffled by the bar association's interference in the committee's journal. "It is more than a little ironic," he said, "that a publication dedicated to the exploration of First Amendment issues is subjected to censorship when it seeks to publish an article about threats to free speech."

The hell, folks? All of us in journalism know the frustration of dealing with corporate counsel, which only has grown during the period in which traditional media has grown more consolidated and, thus, more corporatized. It can keep us out of trouble, but it can also keep us timid. Now, though, we find that corporate counsel has corporate counsel. This is flatly bizarre.

But James Dimos, the association's deputy executive director, objected to the term "libel bully" and other sharp language in the report, saying in an Oct. 19 email that the changes were needed to address "the legitimately held views of A.B.A. staff who are charged with managing the reputational and financial risk to the association." "While we do not believe that such a lawsuit has merit, it is certainly reasonable to attempt to reduce such a likelihood by removing inflammatory language that is unnecessary to further the article's thesis," Mr. Dimos wrote. "Honestly, it is the same advice members of the forum would provide to their own clients."

(That last sentence is the whole problem, but that's a fight for another day.)

This is an amazing feat of self-refutation. Let's run away from research that proves El Caudillo del Mar-A-Lago is a media bully because he might prove once again what a media bully he is. Look, he's not going to file any of these suits. He doesn't want a discovery process open to a vengeful press. And, besides, he's the living, breathing, groping example of a public figure under the Sullivan criteria. His threats are as empty as his promises. This litigious society is getting truly out of hand. Someone should do something.

Click here to respond to this post on the official Esquire Politics Facebook page.

Charles P. Pierce Charles P Pierce is the author of four books, most recently Idiot America, and has been a working journalist since 1976.

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