The Special Counsel investigation of charges that the Trump campaign colluded with Russia to win election has become such an embarrassment that even Trump-hating NBC is mocking the failure to come up with any evidence. Last night’s cold open for Saturday Night Live used the season finale of The Bachelor to express disappointment, and probably to warn its Democrat-heavy audience that the game is up, so it’s time to move on.

In perhaps the ultimate slam (and advice to Mueller that it’s time to give it up – the sort of thing usually reserved for mocking Sean Spicer or other Republicans – a female, Kate McKinnon portrays Mueller.

In a sense, SNL is retailing to a mass audience what honest journalists have been admitting to themselves. Lee Smith of Tablet Magazine made the point to a triple-digit IQ audience last week:

…there is a growing consensus among reporters and thinkers on the left and right—especially those who know anything about Russia, the surveillance apparatus, and intelligence bureaucracy—that the Russiagate-collusion theory that was supposed to end Trump’s presidency within six months has sprung more than a few holes. Worse, it has proved to be a cover for U.S. intelligence and law-enforcement bureaucracies to break the law, with what’s left of the press gleefully going along for the ride. Where Watergate was a story about a crime that came to define an entire generation’s oppositional attitude toward politicians and the country’s elite, Russiagate, they argue, has proved itself to be the reverse: It is a device that the American elite is using to define itself against its enemies—the rest of the country.

Yet for its advocates, the questionable veracity of the Russiagate story seems much less important than what has become its real purpose—elite virtue-signaling. Buy into a storyline that turns FBI and CIA bureaucrats and their hand-puppets in the press into heroes while legitimizing the use of a vast surveillance apparatus for partisan purposes, and you’re in. Dissent, and you’re out, or worse—you’re defending Trump.

The danger for the Left is considerable if it is throwing itself in with the FBI and CIA bureaucrats (and political appointees) who have tried to bring down Trump. A reckoning is coming. The DOJ Inspector General’s report is due soon, and there is strong reason to believe that indictments may be on their way.