Alleged Russian mob fixer, defender of corrupt and brutal dictatots everywhere, and, naturally Trump campaign factotum, Paul Manafort, was on This Week with George Stephanopoulos. The clip is worth watching just to observe Stephanopoulos struggle to keep from laughing in the face of a guy who is lying and doing in such a way that it is obvious the he doesn’t even think his lies are plausible.

STEPHANOPOULOS: So you just heard, uh, what Jon Karl went through right there. And you’re coming off a — another tough weekend, uh, swept in Wyoming by Ted Cruz. He also seemed to pick up some delegates in West Virginia, places like Georgia, as well.

Are you getting beat on the ground right now?

MANAFORT: Well, it’s actually only picked up delegates yesterday in Wyoming and we didn’t even play there, because it was a closed system and, uh, we didn’t want to waste our money and deal with party bosses.

Um, actually, the dialogue and the narrative of this campaign isn’t focusing on the real issues. The real issue is there’s not going to be a second ballot.

This is the wishful thinking upon which the Trump campaign depends. I clip some of this out for brevity’s sake, but Jon Karl leads off the segment by saying that Trump needs 68% of the remaining delegates to win in the first ballot and Manafort, you can nearly see the wheels grinding behind that Area 51-sized forehead as he comes up it, interprets that as “there’s not going to be a second ballot.”

MANAFORT: And if you just look at the states that Cruz won, the states that Trump won, what do you see?

With Cruz, he wins the reddest of red states, where you have voterless primaries, where — where the — the rules favor, you know, organization versus appeal to the voters.

Trump wins in states that we have to win to win the presidency. You have — we have appealed to Independents and Republicans…

Yeppers. States like Wisconsin and Ohio, the reddest of red states, went for Trump.

STEPHANOPOULOS: You and Mr. Trump keep talking about the rigged system. But — but, you know, so far, Donald Trump has won about 37 percent of the vote and he’s gotten 48 percent of the delegates.

You could argue that the system is rigged in his favor.

He doesn’t have an answer.

STEPHANOPOULOS: You’ve also said that the Cruz campaign is breaking the rules and said many times that they’re — they’re doing that, that you’re going to be filing protests.

What specific evidence do you have that they’re breaking the rules and when will you be filing these protests?

He offered no evidence or even allegations of rules violations and refused to offer any state where a specific protest was being filed against the Cruz campaign.

STEPHANOPOULOS: But — but you knew the rules going in.

MANAFORT: And we’re playing by them. And we’re winning. And that’s the point. And there’s only going to be one ballot.

Then why are they complaining?

Trump’s supporters are hilariously claiming that Paul Manafort was responsible for Ronald Reagan’s 1980 convention victory. The fact is that George H W Bush suspended his campaign in May 1980 and Reagan was unopposed in the July convention. Manafort is just one of the many idiots that Trump has hired. This interview shows just how sleazy and out of touch Manafort is with just about everything concerning this election.