The calendar says Halloween is still a week away, but impeachment is delivering the horror show early to Washington.
A city renowned for elegant, neo-classical buildings and buttoned-down bureaucrats has become the set for a political slasher movie.
Fighting for political survival before he can even focus on reelection in 2020, President Donald Trump has the leading role.
He denounced anyone in his party who won't stick by him as "human scum."
Not to be out-crazed, Democrat Barack Obama's former national security advisor Susan Rice went on air to brand a senior Republican senator and Trump booster, Lindsey Graham, a "piece of shit."
Allegedly helping him was a Trump-friendly trio of officials: the US ambassador to the European Union, the special Ukraine envoy and the energy secretary. They called themselves the "three amigos."
Trump's loyal former attorney general Matthew Whitaker told Fox this week that "abuse of power is not a crime." The conservative-leaning Wall Street Journal opined that even if Trump was up to no good, he was too "inept" to succeed -- and that there's no such thing as "impeachment for incompetence."