The show has reached a new low

| 5:05 pm EDT July 30, 2018
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It finally hit me today when I was trying to parse the ongoing war of words between Donald Trump’s current lawyer, who isn’t a real lawyer, and Donald Trump’s former lawyer, who isn’t a real lawyer either. I couldn’t help but marvel at how closely these guys all resembled the inept henchmen in dark comedies whose characters are a mix of pure evil and bumbling comic relief. Then I stopped back and thought about who these people really are, and how little sense any of this makes.

Donald Trump, a career criminal who keeps going bankrupt while saying racist things and sexually assaulting women, has conspired with the Kremlin to make himself the illegitimate President of the United States. Paul Manafort, a guy who’s been charged with so many felonies he literally needs two trials, helped put him there. Rudy Giuliani, Trump’s increasingly senile criminal co-conspirator, is his defense attorney, despite not having practiced law in decades. Michael Cohen, the most incompetent scandal-fixer of all time, is now trying to destroy Trump because he didn’t receive a pardon, or something like that. There’s a porn star somewhere in the mix, and she hates all of them, and she’s the only classy one.

The fate of the United States now revolves around these people. That doesn’t seem possible, but it’s true. It comes down to who, if anyone, can take down this former reality show host while we still have a country. It could end up being the scorned fixer, the porn star, her race car driving lawyer, the one guy who cut a plea deal, the other guy who cut a plea deal, the Russian spy who was allegedly sleeping her way to the top of the Republican Party, the one guy who’s about to get arrested, the other guy who’s about to get arrested, the anarchist who lives in a London basement, or perhaps a new character we haven’t yet met.

The thing is, if you were watching a movie chock full of these characters, you’d walk out halfway through, having decided that the characters are too over the top to be believable. Or perhaps you’d keep watching out of morbid curiosity about just how absurd the ending might end up being. Because I cover this stuff all day every day, it’s perhaps become too normal to me that the presidency of the United States now revolves around these characters. Whenever I briefly take a step back from it all, I’m reminded that none of this is within a million miles of normal. There’s nothing real about this reality show. And the show has reached a new low.