Ungaggable: Costumed clowns and lickspittle surrogates 'R Us'

This week saw a seedy, craven parade of MAGA stooges trooping into court to pay fealty to their two-bit mob-boss on trial for cooking the books to hide hush money payments to a porn star so he could get elected to a job he was stupefyingly unfit for, and still is. Then "God's most pathetic Republicans" - from Mike Handmaid’s Tale to the Beetlejuice Lady - brazenly violated his gag order for him to declare the rule of law "a sham." The most "gob-smacking" part: The arrival of "shiny-eyed Christian nationalist" and second-in-line to the presidency Mike Johnson with an "all-out assault the federal and state legal systems foundational to the U.S. Johnson called the court "corrupt," attacked Judge Merchan's daughter - "Among the atrocities is making millions of dollars fundraising for Democrats" - said "these are politically motivated trials" and declared Trump "innocent." Because the GOP is shameless and irony is dead, the next day Johnson - the Congressional architect of the effort to overturn the 2020 election who's already said it's his "duty" to do it again if needed, a position deemed on "the far-right fringes of American legal thought" - turned up at a House "Back the Blue” event to proclaim, "We've got to make crimes criminal again" and promote a California sheriff, Oath Keeper and Jan. 6 fan-boy who decries "the sick and twisted progressive social experiment." This time it was far-right cranks Lauren Boebert, who missed court for her miscreant son facing 22 charges including a felony and multiple misdemeanor property thefts but found time to come trash Judge Merchan's daughter - "millions and millions of dollars" - and Matt Gaetz, who once sought a pardon from Trump while under now-renewed investigation for sex-trafficking a teen girl and said the D.A.