Meanwhile

Donald Trump makes frequent phone calls on unsecured cellphones, which if I understand the various technologies involved, means that those calls are probably being surveilled by foreign intelligence agencies.

The funny thing (not funny like a clown) is why he’s doing this:

The Times’ story is filled with the kind of mordant, understated humor that tends to characterize the White House beat in an era when the president’s abnormalities are piled one atop another. Trump “typically relies on his mobile phones when he does not want a call going through the White House switchboard and logged for senior aides to see, his aides said,” the Timesreports. “Many of those Mr. Trump speaks with most often on one of his cellphones, such as hosts at Fox News, share the president’s political views, or simply enable his sense of grievance about any number of subjects.”

The good news, as it were, is that aides think — or at least hope — that Trump is not giving away much of value with these calls, because he doesn’t know much of value. Administration officials “said they had further confidence he was not spilling secrets because he rarely digs into the details of the intelligence he is shown and is not well versed in the operational specifics of military or covert activities.” Also, Trump is apparently too compromised by Russia to be worth spying on by Moscow: “Russia is not believed to be running as sophisticated an influence effort as China because of Mr. Trump’s apparent affinity for President Vladimir V. Putin, a former official said.”

Given that he is being secretly surveilled by China, it’s probably good that Trump is too ignorant and lazy to have anything of value to disclose. But the overall situation is quite suboptimal.

So what is the punchline Kenneth?

There is so much gross misconduct in this administration, it’s not clear Democrats will even bother holding hearings on this issue if they gain control of Congress. That is itself telling: Trump has clearly exceeded his opponent’s culpability on her worst scandal, and it’s probably not even one of the 100 worst things he’s done, so far.

Ah yes, emails.

There are mornings when this all seems like a bad dream.