The day before he was scheduled to testify about the FBI investigation into the Russian role in the 2016 election and the possibility of Trump-Russian collusion, FBI Director Comey was fired. Trump spokespeople then went on TV and said it’s “time to move on” from that pesky Russian business. One wonders if the White House really thought that firing Comey would squelch an inquiry that, given the abrupt nature of the firing and its bizarre rationale, we have no recourse but to conclude is really close to putting the Big Orange Daddy on the hot-seat. .

And what does our GOP Senator Roy Blunt have to say about this remarkable occurrence? Not much:

After Comey’s firing Tuesday, Blunt issued this statement: “Director Comey has served the country well in a number of different roles. Many, including myself, have questioned his actions more than once over the past year. I believe new leadership at the FBI will restore confidence in the organization and among the people who do the hard work to carry out its mission.”

Get the picture? Officer Blunt at the scene of a bloody accident, directing traffic to “move along, nothing to see here folks.”

Tell me this, Roy Blunt: who’ll be selecting that new FBI director? The President who is under investigation by the very FBI whose director he fired? The Attorney General who had to recuse himself from the investigation since he was caught playing footsie with the same Russians who compromised Trump’s former National Security Advisor, Michael Flynn? The members of a GOP controlled congress who can’t seem to understand why stonewalling the appointment of a special prosecutor or independent commission to investigate the Trump-Russia love-fest might make them potentially complicit with treason?

Yeah. Just business as usual according to ol’ Roy.

Meanwhile at the White House, Trump celebrated with the Ruskies, specifically the Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, who, by all accounts, was in high good humor. Which, why wouldn’t he be? Maybe he thinks that Trump’s little show of dictatorial temper has finally derailed the inconvenient dust-up that seemingly soured his usefulness for for Russia. Of course he, and by extension, Putin, might just be gloating because they’ve proven they can get Trump to jump through Russian hoops at will. All joking (wink,wink) aside, Politico’s Susan Glasser points out just how bizarre holding this meeting, at this time was:

The images of Trump putting his arm genially on Lavrov’s back—and a later White House official readout of the meeting that said Trump “emphasized his desire to build a better relationship between the United States and Russia”—couldn’t have come at a more fraught political moment for Trump, amid a barrage of bipartisan criticism of his firing of FBI Director James Comey. On Wednesday morning before meeting with Trump, Lavrov even cracked a joke about his hosts’ political predicament, laughingly claiming not to have heard of the Comey firing while standing alongside Trump’s secretary of state, Rex Tillerson.

In other words, Lavrov was right where he has always wanted to be Wednesday: mocking the United States while being welcomed in the Oval Office by the president himself.

Shouldn’t we be asking Blunt if he really believes that Trump, who, in addition to his intellectual shortcomings, may be compromised by Russian entanglements, can possibly go toe-to-toe with Putin, who, morally repugnant though he is, is still a very smart, very devious man, a man who, in short, doesn’t just talk about the “art of the deal,” but really knows how to deal. Already, Glasser warns, “a number of Russia policy experts with whom I spoke […] worry, too, that Trump is allowing Lavrov—and Putin—to define the terms of his dealings with them on key issues such as Ukraine and Syria.”

Can Republican politicians like Senator Blunt continue to turn a blind eye to what is going on? Is it worth undermining the integrity of our government in order to milk the oblivious fool in the White House for their own domestic purposes?