What a perfect holiday-week news story, the equivalent of a brainless summer movie.

Some clown recently left a small baggie of cocaine in the White House visitors area, thus inspiring various clowns in the MAGA cult (especially the twice-indicted clown) to froth at the mouth. Suddenly they’re all concerned about “security,” which would be laughable if it were not so detestable, given how they were fine with their thugs beating up on Jan. 6 and smearing feces on Capitol corridor walls.

The white powder was discovered last Sunday, in a place where touring visitors leave their cellphones in cubbies (“a heavily traveled area,” says Joe Biden’s press secretary), and the Secret Service says it’s running “an investigation into the cause and manner” of how the coke wound up there. Fine. That’s a worthy probe. But the clown prince of hysteria, terrified more than ever that his ultimate reckoning is at hand, cooked up a quintessentially noxious stew on social media:

“Does anybody really believe that the COCAINE found in the West Wing of the White House, very close to the Oval Office, is for the use of anyone other than Hunter & Joe Biden…Has deranged Jack Smith, the crazy, Trump hating Special Prosecutor, been seen in the area of the COCAINE? He looks like a crackhead to me.”

Well. I have a question for his beleaguered attorneys: Given the fact that your client sought to overthrow the U.S. government, stoked an insurrection, and stole classified government documents that he has since sought to share with God knows who, is it wise to refer to the guy who’s investigating him – and who may yet further indict him – as a “crackhead”?

Just wondering.

Meanwhile, on Fox News, right-wing congressman Darrell Issa, best known for his repeated failed attempts to blame Hillary Clinton for Benghazi, popped up yesterday to announce without evidence that the coke in the visitors area is somehow tied to…you guessed it…Hunter Biden: “He (the president) continues to have somebody with a history of drug addiction in the White House. It is not a small problem that we find cocaine after Hunter Biden has been in the White House.”

Issa was just trolling. The coke was discovered on Sunday, likely “minutes” after it was left there; that’s according to ex-Trump press secretary Kayleigh, who has lately rediscovered factual reality. She said yesterday, “For it to be Hunter Biden, he left on Friday, he was at Camp David. There’s no way, It’s inconceivable to think cocaine could sit for a 72-hour period, so I would rule him out at this point.”

OK, so maybe the coke has no connection to Hunter, and maybe (despite Trump’s insinuation) the coke was not intended for Joe’s nose. Nevertheless, Tom Cotton is on the case. The MAGA senator from Arkansas has sent a letter to the Secret Service, demanding answers: “I urge you to release that information quickly, as the American people deserve to know whether illicit drugs were found in an area where confidential information is exchanged. If the White House complex is not secure, Congress needs to know the details, as well as your plan to correct any security flaws.”

As my mother used to say, “That’s a scream!”

How entertaining it is – there are harsher words, but I’m in holiday mode – to hear that a MAGAt is professing “security” concerns about a baggie of coke “in an area where confidential information is exchanged.” I’ve clearly missed Cotton’s statements professing concern about the recorded exchanges of confidential information at Trump’s Jersey golf club; I’ve clearly missed his statements professing concern about the stacking of confidential documents next to a Florida toilet.

This is just bread-and-circuses stuff, grist for the MAGA-GOP distraction machine. Steve Schmidt, the former Republican strategist, brings the mockery: “Cocaine in the White House. Did you hear? Is that something to fear? Might there be something else? Fascist in the White House.”

And if not for Cokegate, perhaps people might start reading about the resilient economy, the lessening inflation, the spike in consumer confidence, the strong labor market (doubling expectations in June), and the billions of bucks currently flowing to red-state road, bridge, and broadband projects.

So a little perspective, please. Just ask yourself what’s more important as we head toward 2024:

A summer mystery about white powder – or a threatened White House restoration of white power?

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Copyright 2023 Dick Polman, distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Dick Polman, a veteran national political columnist based in Philadelphia and a Writer in Residence at the University of Pennsylvania, writes at DickPolman.net. Email him at [email protected]