A heinous chemical attack in Damascus left dozens dead in Syria just eight days ago, including women and children. The images were horrific. A truly abominable attack.

In the intervening time, there have been U.N. Security Council meetings, there have been phone calls and discussion between the heads of state of the nations amassed in Syria fighting ISIS during that country’s devastating civil war. The United States, France, and the UK have named the brutal Syrian government as the perpetrator of the inhuman chemical attack, not the first such attack for Syrian dictator Assad.

Russia, friendly to Assad and aligned with his government, have in turn run a disinformation campaign, going so far as to claim the attack was perpetrated by the British in order to frame Assad and his regime.

Speeches have been made, lines have been drawn, and ultimately, the three nations leading the alliance of countries fighting ISIS and attempting to bring stability, the United States, France, and the United Kingdom, launched a missile strike against chemical weapons targets in the country.

Also during those eight days, MSNBC has spent an incredible amount of time talking about a movie.

“Wag the Dog” is a film by Barry Levinson, and it’s been coming up an awful lot. The movie and the phrase are the same thing: the idea that a President would go to war to avoid a domestic scandal.

How much is MSNBC talking about it?

Yeah.

Although O’Donnell, Maddow, and Matthews seem fully bought in, there’s reason to suspect the network execs are pushing the topic as well, as several of the guests in the video, and least one of the hosts (Hewitt) are clearly skeptical if not downright put off by the idea.

Not Matthews, though, as I noted. In fact, you should really catch the longer clip, from this morning’s “Politics Nation” with Al Sharpton, where he goes on about it.

Contrary evidence – like the fact that all of these other nations are involved, like the fact that Matthews and the rest of MSNBC have already found Trump guilty of collusion with Russia not conspiring against them, like the fact the chemical attack happened before the Cohen raid, like the fact that our Generals and Sec. Mattis aren’t bald-faced liars who would risk American lives to distract from a sex scandal, like the fact, as one MSNBC guest (a writer with Axios) pointed out, that for someone trying to distract from Mueller and Cohen Trump sure spends a hell of a lot of time talking about them and drawing attention to them – don’t matter to true believers.

Like numerologists they will continue to talk about the timing. They saw the movie and it was just exactly what they want to think about Republicans, and so they simply do.

Once they’re called on it, they’ll try to ex post facto nuance it up, but what they believe they’ve already said. And their fans and viewers are saying it on social media and in blogs and articles. It is in the early stages of becoming a Known Fact.

Just watch. In a year it will be treated as “common knowledge” that three world powers launched a military attack following a chemical weapons horror all for the sake of distracting the American population from a Trump scandal that he himself constantly draws attention to.

Because that is how dumb sh** is these days.