Thank you, Mr. President.

Was that so hard? Picture Volodymyr Zelenskyy, three years holding back the madman of Moscow, when his fair-weather friends in Washington, drunk with power, commanded him to kiss the ring.

“Have you no sense of decency?” asked Army counsel Joseph Welch. Seven decades on, as Zelenskyy confronted the Three Stooges of President Donald Trump and his mini-mes, might the words of Marc Antony have rung in his ears: “Cry ‘Havoc!’ and let slip the dogs of war.”

Surely if Ukraine’s unlikely leader can shed his TV cloth and assume the mantle, anyone can magically insert themself into an unaired episode of “The Apprentice” and give the master blaster what he wants. As Linda Ronstadt sang, “I’m gonna say it again, you’re no good, you’re no good, you’re no good.” I appreciate, counter-intuitively, his brand of snake-oil. Thank you, Mr. President.

Only a year or so ago — a lifetime in politics — I was a lowly columnist, soup bowl in my hands, Oliver-Twisting, begging the Democrats to send their doddering president back to Delaware while there was still time and, above all, not to crown then-Vice President Kamala Harris as his successor. Much ink I poured into warning this ship of fools that way lay a titanic iceberg. Did they listen? We are living the answer. They thought the bubble would hold. Pop goes the weasel.

When the once-and-future king assumed the position, a rude awakening dawned. With one hand on avarice and the other on resentment, the return of the Visigoths was made manifest. Who should emerge from the scrum of egomania but the world’s richest human Elon Musk posing for a poster from the Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Federal departments fell like dominoes. The challenge has been thrown down; a court fight looms at Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts’ OK Corral.

I say again, with a spark in the eye: Thank you, Mr. President. For a few long weeks, it seemed all hope was lost. Legal scholars, military heroes and historians from funding-stripped institutions of higher learning claimed to see the Reich rise again. They scented the sickly air of a banana republic, quoted Orwell, put the “k” as in Kafka back in “Amerika,” felt the undertow of the death of the republic.

Then he self-destructed. It didn’t take long. Some madness is so fierce and fulminating that it disregards all reason, damns the consequence and must burn itself out, a warning flare flaming white-hot into ash on the road to ruin. The Dems stood hopelessly aghast, dithering while Rome burns, with the same self-blame that years ago made them imbibe the moonshine of “Hillbilly Elegy.” Meanwhile, the bloodsuckers of the party in power lay down before the executive and allowed their victory to immolate on TikTok.

Thank you, Mr. President. (It gets easier each time.) Who knew that our friendly neighbors to the north were an enemy at the gates, that we had to test their mettle? In what failed class at Wharton did they teach that tariffs were the answer? What’s a little recession between friends? We’ve lived through pandemic. To make an omelet, you need to break some $2 eggs. Just when I thought we’d hung the high costs of retail around Joe Biden’s neck, the confederacy of dunces’ cavalry arrives to pin it on their rebel and his muskrats. You would have thought this bobblehead bunch would realize that a third of federal workers are veterans, a class with long memories and longer knives. You might not be faulted for head-scratching over abandoning Africa to the Chinese yuan, running away from USAID’s critical work within a continent on whose minerals Teslas run and from where tomorrow’s pandemics may arise. Closer to home, where 10 percent of children already go unvaccinated for measles, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. preaches pablum while kids die. His fingers, which once held a milky syringe, now drip blood.

Witness the hand-wringing of the Dems and the farce of a craven GOP that has embraced an unbalance of powers in a way that no amount of genuflection can exaggerate. History will relegate to the sludge pond Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Sen. Lindsay Graham and their ilk. We are right to fear martial law enforcing a tyrannical third term. But grace to Trump’s overreach, we might see a midterm correction. With a flick of the wrist on the ballot lever could come a flip of the House.

Indeed, irrevocable damage will have been done. Courts have a hard time catching up when the legislative branch abdicates responsibility. Americans aren’t dumb. They voted for correction, not wholesale destruction. The electorate didn’t expect to embrace Vladimir Putin, blame Canada, terminate vets, let children die and destroy democracy. Despite the tech jackals of plutocracy, we still can vote. For now.

Thank you, Mr. President.