Rick Wilson: Trump turns GOP into confederacy of dunces. He's not wrong:

The Republican Party’s head first dive into breathless conspiratorial fantasies in defense of Donald Trump is a brand-defining moment as the Party of Lincoln morphs into the Party of LaRouche. Listening as members of Congress, the Fox/talk-radio world and the constellation of bat#badword# crazy people drawn to Esoteric Trumpism adopt increasingly baroque theories to protect The Donald isn’t just depressing, it’s tragic. A diseased slurry of fake news, post-Truth Trumpism and Russkie agitprop infects the Republican Party. It’s an Ebola of wild-eyed MK-ULTRA paranoiac raving, spreading to every organ of the Republican body politic. This loon-centric new world of crazy talk has dissolved the old ideological skeleton of the GOP and reduced it from the Conservative Party of Ideas to the Crackpot Party of Infowars. Covering up the connections between Donald Trump, his campaign officials and family members with Russia, and this president’s efforts to obstruct justice and derail Mueller will come at a still-untallied cost to our nation, our institutions, and the dignity and reputation of the GOP. It’s going to get worse as Mueller closes in. Last week, the ridiculous memo crafted by Fredo Nunes (R-Clownshow) and his staffers (is that you, Ezra Cohen-Watnick?) was the subject of hyperventilating conspiracy headlines across right-wing media. While breathless Republicans like Matt Gaetz (R-The Narcissus of Fox News) raced for the cameras screaming that this is a “worse than Watergate” bombshell, this fetid, steaming #badword#heap of lies, cherry-picked outrage bait for the Fox booboisie, and crayon-scribble was full of tells that it was all Trump, and little truth. As they voted Monday night to release their version, while denying the Democrats the chance to release their rebuttal, the scam was clear. The first clue is that the memo is being rolled out as part of a PR effort so clumsy, obvious, ham-fisted, and covered in its own drool that it could only appeal to the most deluded Deep State fantasists. Naturally, it has been in more or less constant rotation on Fox News and the fever swamp of pro-Trump fake news sites. WHEW! I think I need a ciggie!

The second problem with the memo is that Team Fredo broke the central rule of politics: underpromise and over-deliver. If the Nunes Grimoire of Eldritch Deep State Perfidy was radioactive and contained evidence of an immediate and existential threat to our democracy posed by rogue FBI agents wielding bogus FISA applications, why won’t Nunes share it with his Senate counterparts? Why won’t he allow the Trump Justice Department to examine it? Why did he whip the intelligence committee to prevent the release of a rebuttal? It’s simple: There’s so little there that no serious person would blow out U.S. intelligence sources and methods to win a political point defending Donald Trump. No one, except Nunes, his cronies and the House leadership who allow his continued depredations on the rule of law.

Make no mistake, Nunes and his co-conspirators don’t believe there’s an actual Deep State conspiracy at the FBI or the intelligence agencies. This boundlessly cynical plot is an attempt to shield Donald Trump not just from Bob Mueller’s Russia investigation, but from any form of accountability or oversight. I have to give them credit their brazen effort. The coordination between Fox news, the Trump Uber Alles caucus in the House, talk radio, and the online Cray Vortex is rather impressive. In the Best Supporting Hackers role, the Russians chimed in right on cue to amplify the GOP’s message. Call me old fashioned, but I remember when working hand-in-hand with a hostile foreign government to undermine American institutions was called “treason.” The story was falling apart even before the Moron Caucus beclowned themselves with the “Secret Society” theme, since the memo obviously hadn’t done enough to reduce the Republicans in stature and seriousness. Seizing on a single, obviously joking text message, Sen. Ron Johnson took to the microphones to describe the FBI’s alleged “Secret Society” as if he had watched Eyes Wide Shut enough times to memorize it. Fidelio, Ron. Fidelio.

When confronted with the risible absurdity of his claim, Johnson said “informants” had told them about the dark, satanic orgies of the FBI. Within hours, he denied all of it in an embarrassingly clumsy walk back. From the Trump-right obsession with “Q-Anon” as a source of Deep State gibberish to the uncritical acceptance of even the most outrageously absurd rumors, the GOP is becoming defined as a party of conspiracy. It’s is a bad look for a governing party, and it’s getting worse by the day.

When Sean Hannity’s Twitter account briefly went dark Friday night during what appears to be a routine Twitter bot-purge, the Trumpnet lost its collective mind. “Form Submission 1649” led to numerological kookspiracy speculation that would have made Louis Farrakhan proud. I kid you not, whackjobs were saying Hannity’s “1649” tweet was about the year when Charles the 1st was beheaded for treason by Cromwell. Uh huh. Sean Hannity knows about as much about Cromwell and Charles the 1st as he does about string theory.

That’s our world now—one where the real Julian Assange is slipping into the DMs of a parody Hannity account on Twitter, to offer up fresh dirt on Trump’s enemies. If you think Pizzagate was the nadir, take a drive through the online Bedlam of Infowars, Breitbart, Gateway Pundit, or /r/The_Donald, and you won’t have to dig far to discover that Jeffrey Epstein’s time-travel jet took Bill back to 1962 to fake Obama’s birth certificate. You’ll learn that Hillary’s plan to have America invaded by Muslim-lizard mutant antifa supersoldiers is under way as we speak. Will anyone have the guts to finally reveal that Nancy Pelosi is enslaving teenage girls in an Illuminati mind control temple under the Chrysler Building where George Soros presides over nightly human sacrifices and Hello Kitty cosplay?

Well, I admit, that sounds very liberal, or as I like to say, what patriotism looks like!

BTW, if you missed it he was on Maher Friday night, where he uttered this gem, in regard to the GOP's Trump mulligan: Evangelical poontang!==============================