"It was almost no trick at all, he saw, to turn vice into virtue and slander into truth, impotence into abstinence, arrogance into humility, plunder into philanthropy, thievery into honor, blasphemy into wisdom, brutality into patriotism, and sadism into justice. Anybody could do it; it required no brains at all. It merely required no character." - Joseph Heller - Catch 22

At press time the White House had just announced that Rod Rosenstein, Deputy Director of the FBI was on his way to the White House to "resign." Simultaneously sources in the FBI were reporting that Rosenstein would never resign and, if Trump wanted to get rid of him, he'd have to fire him. At the same time, calmer voices in the press were reporting that given both the volatility and the absence of the President (he was in New York at the UN) no one really knew what would happen. By the time you read this, presumably on or after Thursday, September 4, we will know.

First and foremost on nearly everyone's mind was the impact of a possible Nixon-era "Saturday Night Massacre" redux on the midterm elections. AND impact of such a firing on the Mueller investigation of the nature and impact of Russian intervention in the 2016 election.

Firing Rosenstein may well revive what long-dormant senses of honor and duty remain among the Trump-dependent elements of the GOP leaders.

The question of Russian impact on the election, however, is now incontrovertible.

Despite overwhelming evidence of Russian intervention supplied by his own intelligence chiefs, Trump, of course, still believes (or says he believes) he "won" fair and square.

As Jane Mayer noted in her latest New Yorker article, "How Russia Helped Swing the Election for Trump, the President has repeatedly dismissed "the idea that Russian interference affected the outcome of the 2016 election, calling it a 'made up story,' 'ridiculous,' and 'a hoax.' " All stories to the contrary are "fake news" or worse, "treason" on the part of "enemies of the people."

Mayer also points out that a new meticulous analysis by Kathleen Hall Jamieson of the University of Pennsylvania's Annenberg Public Policy Center and FactCheck.org puts all the President's protest to the lie.

According to Mayer, Jamieson's Cyberwar: How Russian Hackers and Trolls Helped Elect a President -- What We Don't, Can't, and Do Know, describes in scholarly detail just how Russian "trolls and hackers" managed to persuade "enough people to either vote in a certain way, or not vote at all" in numbers that clearly affected the outcome of an election won in the electoral college by a President who lost the popular vote.

Jamieson is a scholar. She's been a well-respected authority on the impact of political media and methods for more than four decades, the "epitome of a humorless no-nonsense social scientist driven by the numbers," according to Steven Livingston, a GWU professor, quoted by Mayer.

According to the online journal, AXIOS, when asked by Mayer "point blank if she thought that Trump would be President without the aid of Russians she didn't equivocate. 'No, she said, her face unsmiling. If everything else is a constant? No, I do not.

Jamieson draws her conclusions base on pure analysis of the impact of public communications. "Collusion" isn't an issue. The "Impact" of Russian-driven media stands on its own.

People pay for legitimate campaigns using social media. Why? They work.

It has long seemed obvious that even a minimally effective campaign would have made a large difference in such a narrowly-decided election.

Now the "obvious" is painstakingly documented by one of the foremost scholars in the field.

Trump's "victory" was illegitimate without question.

Unless Trump manages to spike the Mueller investigation the story of the President 's own role in the events that made it so, and that of his campaign staff, family, and the GOP, will soon be told.