What was it Avenatti was fighting for? To a remarkable degree, liberals came to believe he was fighting for America, and doing so by using whatever tools he had at hand — in particular, Daniels’ odd claim that she had somehow been duped when she signed a non-disclosure agreement on the eve of the 2016 election that paid her $130,000 to keep quiet about the night she spent with Trump several years earlier.

However gross the whole business might have been, the agreement was legal, and legally binding. Avenatti’s rage on his client’s behalf somehow became a stand-in for the rage of Trump-haters at the president’s every waking breath. No matter that anyone with a pulse in this country had already come to understand that Trump is the opposite of a paragon when it comes to decent behavior.

We were suddenly being enlisted in a battle for the soul of the country with the banner for decency being held aloft by a sex worker and her testosterone-overdriven mouthpiece and his fanciful set of legal claims.