In this era of frighteningly tiny attention spans and news cycles which barely last an hour, the indictments and guilty plea of President Donald Trump’s former campaign aides — including the man who ran the whole show during a key period of time — in the Russia probe have already faded from news coverage as quickly as advertisements for Halloween costumes. We have learned a lot in the past few days, however, and it seems clear that, while we don’t know exactly when or how, we already have a very good idea of the way this is all going to end.

Very badly.

To be clear, I am in the large group of people who still does not have a great deal of confidence about what really happened with regard to Russian influence on the 2016 election. To review, I believe that Russia did impact the results (though maybe not the winner) and that there is already an awful lot of smoke indicating that they had the help/support/backing of the Trump team in their efforts. I am not yet convinced, however, that “collusion” on Trump’s part has been proven, or even makes perfect sense.

On the other hand, after this week, for those who are no already members of Trump’s “Cult 45,” it is now at least very obvious that, contrary to the president’s constant claims, this story is NOT “Fake News!” We also now know, as the dust on the story begins to settle, that the allegations and evidence here are even stronger than first generally perceived on Monday.