They’re all sorts of people who believe the paddy wagons will be pulling up at any moment to collect Jared and Ivanka while they dine on Beef Wellington and swill Château Lafite Rothschild. Child Services will be on the scene, seconds later, to swoop the kids to Grandpa’s house for safekeeping. These thinkers should enjoy their fantasies, but anyone who entertains the thought that this is how it’ll go down is seriously deluded.

Today, Donald Trump engaged in a teleconference with members of the US military across the seas and told them that they had something to fight for.

"We're doing well at home. The economy is doing really great," he said. "When you come back, you are going to see with the jobs and companies coming back into our country and the stock market just hit a record high. Unemployment is the lowest it's been in 17 years. So you're fighting for something real, you're fighting for something good."

Alabama has emerged as a test bed for the degree to which an American electorate is willing to sacrifice long established, customary, norms for the sake of illusory political advantage. The battle between a besmirched, but defiant Republican, Roy Moore, and a bland Democrat, Doug Jones, also, will demonstrate the degree to which the Republican Party has embraced a belief that the end justifies the means.