Welcome to Alan Dershowitz's insanity party. We've been waiting for you

Strap on your MAGA hat and your Mitch McConnell merchandise because we’re going off into the deep end now

Professor Alan Dershowitz listens to Donald Trump (Getty Images)

If a president believes that getting himself re-elected is in the public interest, then why impeach him for using his powers to smear political rivals? So said Alan Dershowitz, one of Trump’s lawyers and former OJ Simpson defender, during his impeachment trial in the Senate this week. In response, Adam Schiff replied that “what we have seen over the last two days is a descent into Constitutional madness.”

But what Schiff doesn’t understand is that the actual truth of what’s good for the country isn’t as important as what the president believes.

We have moved at supersonic speed past any usual expectations here. We went from “that was a perfect phone call” to “that was a somewhat unorthodox phone call without a quid pro quo” to “so what if there was a quid pro quo if it's for the good of the country when presidents do that all the time?” to “so what if it was a quid pro quo specifically to benefit the president if the president believes he is America, goddammit?” faster than a bullet from a good guy’s gun called forth to stop a school shooting by thoughts and prayers.

Few saw Dershowitz’s “defense of delusion” coming — at least not from the president’s own attorney. A seasoned politico may have opined that Democrats would use it to question Trump’s judgment and prove that he can’t be trusted not to pursue quid pro quos in his own personal interest while using the architecture of the presidency to do so. That would have been a little more predictable, a little more within the bell curve of normal distribution.

But Alan Dershowitz marching confidently into one of the most hallowed rooms in the US to announce that he’s here to defend a man he apparently believes psychologically unable to realize he is not the sole savior of the American people was not normal. It was not predictable. It wasn’t just a descent into Constitutional madness. It was a descent into actual batsh*t insanity. It was the sort of “we have always been at war with Eurasia” doublethink that most eleven-year-olds would be sanctioned for trying to employ during a sixth grade debating contest. And isn’t that just kind of exciting and great?

This is, of course, the administration of alternative facts, of fake news, of trials which don’t need witnesses, of abandoned press conferences and open Twitter wars. This is a time of the BEST. COVFEFE. EVER, threatened by bigly LOSERS and a HOAX and a whistleblower who should and shouldn’t be revealed and punished but can’t be anyway because he doesn’t exist. This is the first administration to stand up against live, screaming babies being ripped from evil atheist mother’s wombs and thrown into trashcans by abortion doctors and WHO IS GOING TO STAND UP AGAINST THAT except the evangelical president, the beneficiary of the prosperity gospel, the man who got RESPECT back for AMERICA by being laughed at during a speech at the UN, the one who puts all those four-year-old Mexican rapists behind bars at the border where they BELONG before they can hurt American interests and his sidekicks who know that satanic pregnancies should MISCARRY RIGHT NOW?

Strap on your MAGA hat and your Mitch McConnell merchandise because we’re going off into the deep end now and we need your unquestioning faith in Republicanism to guide us. If the president believes he isn’t committing an impeachable offense then he isn’t. If getting foreign countries involved in your democracy doesn’t feel wrong then it isn’t. If the only way you can win the election is by digging up dirt on your political rival, then WITCH HUNT and why are you even reading to the end of this sentence, you commie?

Yes, if Joe Biden’s son is corrupt, then he’s corrupt. Just nod along. And if Trump 2020 and Trump 2024 and Trump 2028 is good for the country, then why not make that a reality? If pink unicorns sent from Obama’s real mom in Africa made the economy look worse than it is in Trump’s mind, well then that’s just a problem of perception for the people of America. Lucky the president charitably chooses to see what the rest of us can’t, or we’d be in real trouble.

We were on the precipice for a long time. Alan Dershowitz just tipped us over the edge. So welcome to the party, everyone. Doesn’t it feel good to stop struggling?