he freak show that is American politics got even freakier last week. Mercury was definitely in retrograde, as Sean Hannity got up close and personal with Julian Assange, Sarah Palin hailed him as a national hero (and urged people to see Oliver Stone’s “Snowden”) and Donald Trump, who once called for the “death penalty or something” for Assange, suddenly embraced the WikiLeaks founder as a trusted source.
On Friday, Trump had a sit-down with top intelligence chiefs at Trump Tower, which he proclaimed as “constructive” — the same way a president describes a meeting with an enemy power. But he made it clear he still wasn’t buying the spooks’ story about foreign interference in an election that he won fair and square, not counting those 3 million or so votes.
The source of all this madness, of course, was the alleged Russian hacking of the U.S. presidential election. On Thursday, James Clapper, the director of national “intelligence” — as President-“elect” Trump air-quotes it — appeared before a Senate committee to confirm his belief in Moscow’s nefarious interference. Yes, this is the same Clapper who once lied bald-faced to Congress about NSA surveillance of the public. But the Senate, in rare bipartisan frenzy, declared the intelligence chief totally credible this time.