Meanwhile the criminals in the White House have, of course, been stealing everything they can get their hands on, including all traces of ethical rules.

The Trump administration may have skirted federal ethics rules by retroactively granting a blanket exemption that allows Stephen K. Bannon, the senior White House strategist, to communicate with editors at Breitbart News, where he was recently an executive.

The exemption, made public late Wednesday along with more than a dozen other ethics waivers issued by the White House, allows all White House aides to communicate with news organizations, even if they involve a “a former employer or former client.”

In other words their waivers go like this:

You may ignore all the rules, including retroactively.

No rules, just an insulting pretense of having rules.

The waiver, and the fact that it remains unclear when it was originally issued, seemed unusual to Walter M. Shaub Jr., the director of the Office of Government Ethics, who questioned its validity.

“There is no such thing as a retroactive waiver,” Mr. Shaub said in an interview. “If you need a retroactive waiver, you have violated a rule.”

But Trump is our Absolute Ruler, so he can if he wants to.

In January, President Trump signed an executive order that put in place stringent ethics rules for his political appointees like Mr. Bannon. Under the policy, Mr. Bannon would be barred from contacting Breitbart employees for two years to discuss issues that were under his purview while he was an executive there.

But Mr. Bannon continued those communications, including with Breitbart editors, after beginning his job as Mr. Trump’s chief strategist on Jan. 20, according to a complaint by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, a liberal group.

Well isn’t that just classic. Trump signs an ethical-looking EO, then proceeds to ignore it behind a veil of secrecy.

The swamp has sucked us in.