What would happen if you made a mobbed up grifting malignant narcissist president of the United States?

Wait, let me rephrase that: What would happen if you did that a second time, so that he and his cronies would have had four years to learn how to turn the entire United States government into the world’s largest bust-out?

We criticize and with good reason the New York Times around here, but it’s one of the very few journalistic outlets that has the resources to do this kind of story (gift link), that among other things features some amazing graphic representations of the Shelob’s web of “connections,” as they used to say down at the Italian American Social Club, between Trump, his family, his “friends” and “business associates,” various children and other relatives of the former, and countless national and international political and economic entities, that collectively know how to return a favor.

After all, a refusal is not the act of a friend.

You really should take a look at this. You may well already have a general idea of the outlines of this story, but the specific details — and there are so very many — are mind-blowing.

I can’t even begin to wrap my mind around what would have to be done to clean this up, once we’ve gotten out of this place. A basic rule of thumb however should be: Figure out what Merrick Garland would have done about it, then do the opposite.