Our shameful, shameless president

I don't know which is more frightening: that President Trump would blatantly and transparently lie by claiming that NBC and Lester Holt doctored an interview in which Mr. Trump admitted that the Russia investigation was a factor in his firing former FBI Director James Comey, or that so many Americans are either gullible enough or malicious enough to believe it.

Or claim to believe it.

This is not the way an American president comports himself. This is not the way a democratic leader comports himself.

This is not the way a grownup comports himself- unless he works for the propaganda agency of some authoritarian regime.

And he gets away with it. A shocking number of people, many of normal intelligence, are gullible enough, even after nearly two years of nonstop, often mean-spirited lies since he took office, to continue to believe every absurd and vicious thing Donald Trump says.

Joseph Welch famously asked Mr. Trump's spiritual ancestor, Sen. Joseph McCarthy, "Have you, at long last, no decency?" Those of us who have been paying attention, and have retained any kind of a functioning moral compass ourselves, have been asking that question about Donald Trump ever since he announced his candidacy and before. It would be great to have at least a little evidence that he might. Instead, he keeps giving us more and more reason to doubt it.

The President of the United States apparently has no sense of shame whatsoever. But he should be ashamed of his transparent, utterly basis charge against Lester Holt and NBC. The MSM's liberal bias is undeniable by anyone with any objectivity at all.  But the idea that they could have falsified an interview with the President of the United States in the technically unfeasible way Mr. Trump has charged is preposterous.

Shame on us for allowing this zoo of an administration to so soil our public discourse and the reputations of honorable people for the same of partisan political advantage.

Shame on us for letting Mr. Trump get away with it.