Editor’s Note: This offering — the first of two planned for today — is the 900th post published by The Shinbone Star. We’re proud of our anti-Trump record, and thank you for your support.
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Like the old axiom about needing to step on a cockroach twice because the first crunch you hear is just him cracking his knuckles, Paul Manafort is back in the news.
Even as President Donald Trump was touching up his orange makeup for Tuesday night’s Live Lying session from the Oval Office, news had already broken that Manafort, Trump’s former campaign chairman, had possibly shared 2016 presidential polling data with Konstantin Kilimnik, a man the FBI says has ties to Russian intelligence.
If you’ve grown weary trying to keep track of all the Trump-Russia connections, let me use just one word to break down what that means: COLLUSION!
That’s right. Donnie Dimwit, the guy who’s made a career out of twitting, “NO COLLUSION” to his Racist Base of Faux Patriots, is now up to his schlong in collusion, and baby, collusion has to get pretty deep before it can reach that tiny appendage. How do we know? Well, because porn star Stormy Daniels . . .
You know what, let’s not go there. Besides, analysis of the Trumpian mushroom has to do with his campaign finance fraud case, not his Russian collusion case, so let’s keep things simple, compartmentalized.
Where were we? Oh yes, collusion! I’m sure you already know this because most of you aren’t simply relying on The Shinbone Star to tell you the news for free. You’re also spending your hard-earned dollars to support real journalism at a major newspaper, right? Right! But just in case you missed it for some other, more legitimate reason, it turns out that Manafort’s attorneys, in response to allegations from Special Counsel Robert Mueller (saints praise his holy name), somehow messed up the redactions and made public that their client handed over proprietary data that helped a hostile foreign government — Russia — sway the 2016 presidential election to its preferred candidate, Trump.
As accidents go it was a real doozy, but in our country, where people are innocent until proven guilty, it still might not be considered a smoking gun. Trump, after all, was only Manafort’s boss and the guy who had the most to gain from any borscht-tainted cyber warfare conducted on his behalf. True, no one can say the admission is a smoking gun, but no one can deny that, at the very least, the muzzle is still warm.
For those of us who have moved beyond “ready to get it over with,” none of this comes as a surprise. We’ve always known Trump is guilty; always known that whatever anybody says Trump did, he did it and some more besides. Still, evidence of a link to possible conspiracy to commit treason is deeply satisfying to anyone with a vindictive bent.
The death throes of this presidency surely cannot go on much longer. But even if it does, there’s a bright spot to consider: The longer this drags on, the hotter the bleeding ulcer inside the Trumpian gut must become.
Fester and burn. Fester and burn.
THE SHINBONE STAR 
Yes! On our way to 1,000!
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