Susie Wiles was in a different room at the time

We are all going to have to spend some quality time recalibrating our bullshit detectors again, because as The Criminal staffs up his pro-sedition, pro-corruption administration there are going to be a lot of political figures who are both in the thick of it and who valiantly insist, to a complaint press that exists only to regurgitate whatever comes out of their months, that they are not.

To demonstrate: Politico.

The Gaetz-for-AG plan came together yesterday, just hours before it was announced, Meridith tells us. It was hatched aboard Trump’s airplane en route to Washington, on which Gaetz was a passenger. A Trump official revealed more details to Playbook late last night: BORIS EPSHTEYN played a central role in the development, lobbying Trump to choose Gaetz while incoming White House chief of staff SUSIE WILES was in a different, adjacent room on the plane, apparently unaware.

First off, 80% of everything you will be hearing from "political reporters" in the coming months is going to be horseshit, and Politico's new incarnation as U.S. subsidiary of a far-right German sleaze outlet will be leading that charge. But more to the point, that last phrase stuffed in there stands out.

Susie Wiles, who may or may not be truly given the White House chief of staff role depending on what The Criminal has eaten for breakfast every single morning from now until the inauguration, is not stupid. She is not confused about what she signed up for. She is pro-sedition, as has been established by her willingness to stand by Trump after his lie-fueled attempted coup. She is agnostic to using a bit of murder to advance the Republican cause, as is evinced by her willingness to stand by Trump despite watching along with everyone else as Trump agitated a mob into attacking lawmakers and singled out his vice president for the mob's ire after they had beaten police officers, smashed windows to gain Capitol access, and began hunting for the lawmakers who had refused to install Trump as king. She knows all the rest as well; The Criminal, whose first official action will be to pardon himself for the federal crimes he remains indicted for, has done all of that and more.

But Susie Wiles remains by The Criminal's side now, and the most flattering explanation for that is that Wiles wants money or fame and is agnostic as to how she achieves it. The less flattering explanation is that she is a true believer, and whether or not The Criminal accidentally or not-accidentally murders a lawmaker or two in his delusional rages is irrelevant if Republicanism can rise to omnipotence afterwards.

That is who Wiles is, and the news that "Susie Wiles was in a different room, apparently unaware" feels less like a throwaway note and more like the mantra Wiles will use in coming months to claim that no matter what obviously batshit and repulsive actions the oozing menace unleashes on the nation, things like nominating a fellow sex predator to the attorney general's seat in a last-moment scramble to evade the public release of the evidence against him, she herself bears no blame for that.

Sorry, but it could not be helped: Susie Wiles was in a different room at the time.

This is likely to become a new catchphrase, in fact. Just as we are forever being told that Susan Collins Expressed Concern over the latest gibbering monstrosity—and it was all bullshit, every time, because Susan Collins' "Concern" is only the gift wrap she applies to each of her worst sins before eagerly tearing through the paper and presenting them back to herself while acting surprised, the press will about three times a week be telling us that whenever the worst and most obviously destructive things have happened Susie Wiles Was In A Different Room At The Time.

Hang on, let's try it out:

President-elect Donald Trump is expected to nominate [batshit crazy carrion aficionado, conspiracy crank and] anti-vaccine activist Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to serve as secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, according to two people familiar with the discussions who spoke on condition of anonymity.

Let's just paste one of these in there, see if it helps?

Susie Wiles was in a different room at the time.

There you go, all better. My deepest apologies, all my once-friends and allies who have expressed contempt as I attached himself to the criminal who attempted to erase our elections rather than abide by them, while I am only joining The Criminal's ranks so that I may temper his loudest insanities and translate them into good Republican policies like destroying the regulatory state, stuffing courts with transparently corrupt judges who freely announce that bribes are not bribes anymore, and stripping the bare-bones American safety net so that ketamine-fueled billionaires can skate over the families we abandon, sometimes I will be in a different room at the time. That being how these things go.

I think, perhaps, we need to start keeping a chart of these things. There are going to be a great many people jockeying in coming months to explain that they do not personally back the arrest and deportation of American-born children, those are things that happen in a different room. They are perfectly aware that Trump's pardons of militia members who savagely beat police officers on his behalf are abominable and unforgivable—but sorry, different room.

And that is how people like Susie Wiles, who have backed and continue to back a violence-stoking and delusional dilettante who thought nothing of aiming a violent mob at his enemies, will attempt to keep their names out of the history books and explain themselves to those who now look on them with contempt. It will not work, but they will try.