We’ve seen it over the past eight years, but it's during the last few days that have really made me realize the most difficult job in America may be MAGOPs trying beyond all human endurance to explain away why what Trump said really wasn’t so horrifically terrible.  This is different from “sane-washing” him, translating what word-salad,  dementia-laced gibberish Trump said to suggest what he really means.  That’s easy by comparison, and might even be a bit fun for the translator, stretching your creativity to come up with whatever in the world sounds like it could be good to you. But needing to wrench something inexplicably disturbing and hellish, that should be career-ending and societal-shunning, into sounding just walk-in-the park, everyday normal, must be a soul-crushing burden.

The sort of thing like, after you try to explain away "You can grab them by the p*ssy whenever you want" is really just locker room talk, when it's not at all and it wasn't even in a locker room but at work to an interviewer, you have to avoid looking in a mirror at yourself for a few days until you can patch your memory of having enabled sexual abuse, and your heart has stopped painfully constricting.  And have to do that for eight years because you've dug a hole too deep into the muck to get out.

As I came across the different explanations of MAGOPs attempting to somehow make Trump wanting generals like Adolf Hitler had and saying that Hitler did some good things, I thought, my God, how utterly emotionally and physically exhausting it must be for a Trump supporter to continually have to twist your morals and all you stand for that's decent into a contorted, deformed shape so convoluted that it would make a pretzel envious.

I wish I had written down all the MAGOP efforts when they first began flying by, but the concept didn’t strike me yet.  It’s only when the unrelenting pattern finally emerged and became almost painful just listening to the agonized "explanations" get caught in their constricted throats that I began jotting them down.  So, this is merely a random few.

There was, for instance, this from Brian Kilmeade on Fox, trying desperately with tortured logic to put a warm spin on praising Hitler and his military leaders, suggesting: “Maybe Trump was talking about German generals under Hitler who weren’t Nazis?”

Well, no.  Sorry.  That was not what Trump was talking about.  Given Trump's lack of knowledge of history, as Gen. Mark Kelly explained when he reported their conversation, it’s unlikely Trump didn't even know there were any Germans at all who weren’t Nazis.  (For that matter, he didn’t even know who the famous Gen. Erwin Rommel, the Desert Fox, was!)  But that aside...just for the sake of argument -- so what if it was what Trump meant???!  Believe it or not, that really, honestly doesn’t make it okay. German generals, whoever they were as they loyally followed the leadership of Adolf Hitler, oversaw the killing of about 35-40 million people during WWII.

Oh, and when the only way you can make part of your explanation is by using the words, “…who weren’t Nazis,” you’re already on losing ground.  But again, no, that isn’t what Trump was talking about -- which we know because when Gen. Kelly explained Trump's conversion with him, the phrase, "I'm only talking about the okay ones who weren't Nazis" never came up.

Which brings us to Howard Kurtz on Fox, as he took a turn at contorting his self-respect to make the horror of Trump saying that he yearned for Hitler’s general seem sweet and cuddly. For reasons of illogical known only to himself, Kurtz tried -- "Trump may have just been letting off steam.”

My first reaction was -- so, wait, of all the leaders in history Trump could have picked from to pine for, he chose...Adolf Hitler?!!  This from Howard Kurtz is the sort of thing you suggest only when you’ve twisted yourself so uncomfortably that you have to blurt out the first words you can spit out, or else you'll burst.

What I’d have loved, though, was for Kurtz to have to also explain Trump saying that Hitler did some good things -- and Trump echoing Hitler's words like calling immigrants “vermin” and that they were “poisoning the blood.”  And him embracing the support of neo-Nazis.  Not only would Trump have to be blowing off so much steam that he could power a locomotive, but so too would have Howard Kurtz.

As a change of pace from Things Said on Fox, Gov. Chris Sununu (R-NH) was on CNN and asked if Trump’s praise of Adolf Hitler had gotten him to reconsider his support for the fascist: "No,” Sununu said (of course, being a loyal MAGOP, with his ever-present attempt at a kindly-looking smile).  But then he had to come up with a reason, and -- there's not being a one available -- reached deep into his empty gut, rummaged around inside-out, and only could come up with, “We've heard a lot of extreme things from Donald Trump. With a guy like that, it's kinda baked into the vote."

What Mr. Sununu slides over is that, no, this isn't Trump saying something "extreme." Something "extreme" is saying immigrants eat pets. Something “extreme” is suggesting windmills cause cancer.  Something “extreme” is talking about Arnold Palmer’s genitals for 10 minutes.  This, though, is praising ADOLF HITLER. And no amount of warm, genial, faux, half-baked smiles from Mr. Sununu changes that he is enabling that.

And no, fascism and admiration of Hitler is not baked into the vote of Americans.  It takes Trump and his MAGOP enablers, like Chef Sununu, to add the ingredients and mix them together.

Then, there was this exchange between Gov. Doug Burgum (R-ND) with host Sara Sidner on CNN –

BURGUM: If you talk about what someone said about Trump 5 years ago--

SIDNER: John Kelly called Trump a fascist 2 days ago

BURGUM: If he had concerns, he could've said it when he was working for him 5 years ago

The best that Doug Burgum could in his distorted effort to enable a fascist is to excuse it because it’s what Trump said five years ago.  Well…yes, that’s right -- five years ago Trump actually did pine away for Nazi generals and said Hitler did some good things.  That’s pretty terrible to most people.  No matter how many years ago it was said.  But y’know, if Dough Burgum insists on complaints about Trump being said “at the time,” there’s always his running mate “JD Vance” calling him an "American Hitler." At the time!

But also, it seems likely, if not probable that John Kelly did say that to others in his circle about Trump at the time -- since "Trump liked Hitler's generals and though he did some good things" is not something you keep to yourself.  But to keep his job as Chief of Staff and stay in position where he was able to hold Trump in check, no, he couldn't have said it publicly.  He’d have been fired on the spot.   Further, a lot of MAGOPS later critical publicly of Trump have said they did not say things in public at the time from fear of violence and retribution by Trump supporters.   But – whatever the reason John Kelly didn’t call Trump a fascist “at the time”, the actual point is – Gen. Kelly is Actually Saying It Now!!

I’d also love someone to ask Mr. Burgum, as long as his main focus is on what's said right now, does he think that the honored Marine Gen. John Kelly is a "degenerate" and low-life", as Trump has called him, right now?  Just curious.

Moreover, if Doug Burgum wants to twist himself in knots by supposedly making this only about just one “someone” (who happens to be a decorated career Marine general, quite a “someone” indeed…) and what he alone said, what would the governor say about the reality that Trump’s Chairman of the Joint Chief of Staff Gen. Mark Milley also called Trump “fascist to the core,” (and “the most dangerous person in the country”), the same as Trump’s (longest-serving) Chief of Staff Gen. Kelly.  The same as Trump’s former Defense Secretary Gen. Jim Mattis (who Trump called “a man of honor, a man of devotion and a man of total action”) who sent an email to journalist Bob Woodward agreeing with Milley’s sentiments about Trump being fascist to the core.  And so too did yet another of Trump’s Defense Secretaries, Lt. Mark Esper – who agreed with Kelly and said that Trump “has inclinations” towards fascism.  Noting that “It’s hard to say that he doesn’t.”  While adding, “And I think it's something we should be wary about.”  And just for good measure to make Doug Burgum happy, we can add Trump’s National Security Advisor Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster calling Trump a threat to democracy.

All of whom really exist, no matter how much Doug Burgum wants to pretzel himself by limiting charges of Trump’s fascism to just being from “someone.”  From five years ago.  Never mind the reality of today. And a whole lot of someones.

And the contortions go on.  We'll end with just one more.  Because, similarly, billionaire Trump supporter Bill Ackman was on CNBC and asked “How can you support Trump after what John Kelly revealed about him?”  And he contorted himself to trying that very same only a single person dismissal, which appears to be a go-to convolution to make it seem it’s all okay.  “It's one person stating a series of things,” he said.

This is sort of like a Catholic priest dismissing Martin Luther as just “someone,” a crank who posted his 95 Theses on the door of the Castle Church in Wittenberg.  Nothing to worry about, it's just a series of things.

Just a series of things.  That Trump is a fascist to the core, that he says he wants his generals like Hitler’s, that he believes Hitler did some good things, that Trump doesn’t even know Hitler’s generals later tried to kill him, that he is a danger to democracy, that Trump is the most dangerous man in the country.  As far as lists go, that’s a pretty disturbing series of things.

And actually, as we’ve noted., it’s not even remotely just “one person” at all.  But – to repeat, since it bears repeating when trying to untie the MAGOP Gordian knot that keeps getting repeated -- it's Gen. John Kelly calling Trump a fascist, as did Gen. Jim Mattis.  As did Gen. Mark Milley.  And Lt. Mark Esper.  And Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster calling Trump a threat to democracy.  All of them hired by Trump, initially praised by Trump, and among his closest advisers on national security.

It must be exhausting for MAGOPs to twist themselves so much trying to explain away the inexplicable.

What MAGOPs have to do, regularly, almost on a daily basis these days, it seems, twisting themselves like contortionists to make the most reprehensible, worst possible words from Trump seem like – oh, tosh, it’s nothing.

And all this above is just from the past week!!!  Imagine how totally drained MAGOPs must be, convoluting their bodies, minds and souls to make a demented, malignant narcissist, anti-Semitic, white supremacist, convicted felon, adjudicated rapist, fascist who echoes Adolf Hitler seem acceptable and to enable him for the past eight years.

It’s just Trump being Trump, MAGOPs say.

Yes.  It is.  And that is exactly the problem.  A pathological fascist with dementia.  And the MAGOPs are fine with it.  As they desperately twist and contort themselves to levels that would frighten a chiropractor.

Yeah, it’s just Trump blowing off steam.

So was Mount Vesuvius.  Ask the people of Pompeii how that worked out for them.

But then, that's today's MAGOP.