Trump's defense of his son's meetings marks a revolting new low

That isn't the point. The intelligence community has told Trump that Russia interfered. The president shouldn't be inquiring -- he should be informing Putin about the consequences of this unacceptable behavior. But Trump continues to dispute reality. "Somebody did say if he [Putin] did do it, you wouldn't have found out about it," Trump added.

We are at risk of suffering outrage overload here. So many troubling things have happened, and Trump continues to make so many beyond-the-pale statements, that we are losing our capacity to respond to all of it with appropriate concern.

Meanwhile, the alarm bells clang. Trump, we are told, didn't know about the meeting with Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya until a few days before it became public. Except, maybe, he did. "In fact, maybe it was mentioned at some point," Trump acknowledged in a conversation with pool reporters -- a part of the off-the-record, then on-the-record encounter not included in the official White House transcript.

Was he talking about Russian adoption or the meeting itself? Unclear -- but at this point the White House deserves little presumption of honesty or full disclosure. The latest evidence: NBC News' report that the Trump Tower meeting was also attended by a former Soviet counterintelligence officer. So much for Trumpian back-patting about transparency.

I hear the what-aboutists stirring. But what about Democrats and Ukraine? According to a January report in Politico, a Ukrainian-American consultant to the Democratic National Committee "met with top officials in the Ukrainian Embassy in Washington in an effort to expose ties between Trump, top campaign aide Paul Manafort and Russia." Problematic? Perhaps. But Ukraine is not a U.S. adversary. The scope of its reported involvement is far different from a Putin-directed effort to illegally hack emails to help elect Trump.

If there is one silver lining to this staggering news, it is that it serves to strengthen special counsel Robert Mueller. Trump continues to cry "witch hunt." Yet there can no longer be any doubt that there is something for Mueller to investigate. And even this supine Republican Congress would not tolerate his summary firing. Would it?

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Ruth Marcus' email address is ruthmarcus@washpost.com.