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The 2016 article gave new weight to Trump-Russia claims. The term “unwitting agent” appeared in headlines all over, from Reuters to Politico to NBC to the Washington Post to the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. As my colleague Walter Kirn eloquently put it, “In that statement, we have the seed of seven years of bullshit.”

There may not be a specific law enjoining intelligence officials from spreading lies in mass media to further electoral aims, or against politicians using intelligence personnel to mesmerize the flaccid brains of corporate reporters, but I’d argue such behavior goes against the spirit of the CIA’s 1947 charter prohibiting domestic spycraft.

These people — all of them — need to get out of domestic politics, leave cable, and go back to living off overpaid no-show jobs at the Rand Corporation or Raytheon as God ordained. They are exactly the direct threat to democracy they keep claiming other groups are, and it’s increasingly clear our survival as a nation will depend on finding a way to expunge them from the domestic political arena. It’s their remorseless fascistic rhetoric I think I hear when I see people like Wisconsin Democrat Mark Pocan say about the Tucker Carlson story, “Now they just need to take out the rest of the trash.”

Who’s they? To what higher cabal is a member of congress referring when he talks about sweeping away the rest of America’s human trash? That sounds like Travis Bickle waiting for a “real rain to come and wash all the scum off the streets,” except in modern America that’s not a lone outcast’s fantasy but mainstream cult demand. They want the rabble washed away, and can’t wait for an excuse to start raining.