Reports say he sent His spy chief, Mr. Ratcliffe—emphasis on the rat—aboard a military cargo plane that bounced through Riga and landed in Moscow for a brisk four-hour closed-door gabfest. Apparently the usual diplomatic channels were too clogged with horseshit to handle it.

Then, as if some celestial idiot had punched the MAKE EVERYBODY NERVOUS button, multiple E-6B Mercury “doomsday planes” appeared over the country.

AMERICA’S AIRBORNE NUCLEAR COMMAND CENTERS BUILT FOR ARMAGEDDON

These are airborne emergency offices—designed to keep the nuclear machine from bulbitating in its own pants if ground-based command systems go belly-up.

Now, let’s not wet the national bedspread. These planes do fly routine missions. Their existence does not prove anyone was about to start flinging atomic furniture across the hemisphere. It proves the military owns a great deal of expensive, ugly machinery and enjoys flying it around while the rest of us stare at flight-tracker dots like raccoons watching a microwave.

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But the timing?

The timing has the subtle elegance of a drunk uncle dropping trou at a funeral.

A CIA chief reportedly shows up in Moscow. The Kremlin plays dumb. A special-mission C-17 rolls in with all the discretion of a sewer truck crashing through a cathedral. Then several apocalypse-ready aircraft are visible overhead back home.

Maybe it’s routine coincidence. Maybe it’s an urgent warning. Maybe it’s a crisis-management booty call conducted inside an encrypted cargo tube.

Nobody is saying publicly—which is Washington’s favorite sex position: lights off, records sealed, taxpayer sweating in the hallway.

And what a magnificent gift this is: once again, we can lower our standards. Beneath the basement. Beneath the septic tank. Down to the molten core where confidence goes to die screaming.

Once you lower them far enough, you can appreciate the splendor:

A government that may be trying to stop catastrophe while communicating with its own citizens through rumors, aircraft registrations, and the anxious bowel movements of aviation nerds.

So let’s all enjoy the greatest show on Earth, designed by the greatest ringmaster on Earth.* Ever. The greatest ever. The biggest, bestest ever.

The administration may be preventing a disaster—or merely rehearsing for one. The truth is duct-taped to a folding chair in a windowless room, while a parade of waterboarding fixers takes turns whispering “No comment” into its ear like it’s a lullaby for the terminally dishonest.

*Allegedly.

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