Allow me an open-palmed shrug of disgust to end February by briefly mentioning a side-story to yesterday’s ridiculous faux-unveiling of the “Epstein files.” (Charlie Cooke wrote a fine piece this morning on the topic, noting how mindlessly tribal Trump’s diehard supporters look when they pretend Bondi’s stunt was anything other than an immense embarrassment for Trump’s administration.) Indeed, it’s hard to shake the feeling that the new Trumpists in Washington, D.C., don’t take the entire Epstein case terribly seriously at all and think of it is more as a glitzy distraction, a fun political football to idly kick around.

I tend to think they’re right about that — I wrote why in my piece last night — but also think their cynicism shouldn’t show so openly and contemptuously. Yesterday afternoon, as MAGA world was holding its breath with anticipation of the Big Reveal, the GOP House Judiciary’s official Twitter account got millions of eyeballs’ worth of attention by throwing up a “red alert” post blaring “#BREAKING: EPSTEIN FILES RELEASED” with a link that led to, of all things, a “RickRoll” — yes, that’s right, the lamest internet meme of 2009, somehow back again and lamer than ever.

Maybe you personally found it funny — my reaction was more akin to stunned disbelief that a nominally serious committee of lawmakers would joke around about the potential rape and/or trafficking of minors by a notorious pimp — and so cloddishly at that. I also noticed that I wasn’t the only one who was bemused; the stunt was universally reviled online, the tweet was later deleted, and one presumes a young staffer has either been dismissed or severely reprimanded.

If I cared one-tenth as much about the Epstein files as so many of Trump’s fans clearly do, I’d fire whoever wrote that out of a cannon in the direction of the Chesapeake Bay. There is nothing funny about this to the people who take Epstein’s predations seriously (or who believe, incorrectly, that some massive conspiratorial network of famous pedophiles will emerge from Epstein’s file). Turning it into a joke — not even a clever but Extremely Online joke, I must emphasize, but the lamest and laziest gag imaginable — just proves that standards are slipping all across the younger political generation in terms of standards of communication. Leave the trolling to nongovernment employees next time.