“My, oh my, you sure know how to arrange things

You set it up so well, so carefully…” — Don Henley and Glenn Frye

Are you gonna believe him, or your lyin’ eyes?

And ears?

That really is just about what it has come down to, you know.

Ever since the appointment of a special counsel investigation into whether there was a cyber attack on the 2016 presidential election and whether there might have been any American cooperation in such an effort, there has been a strong and consistent push back on the part of the Trump administration and its allies in Congress, against both the greater notion of any Russian “meddling” and the investigation itself, headed by previously highly respected former FBI Director Robert Mueller.

The president has questioned the legitimacy of Mueller’s very appointment and the integrity of his team of lawyers.

The president has called the investigation “rigged.”

The president has called the investigation “a hoax.”

Through seemingly every manner and in every venue imaginable, the president has called the investigation a “witch hunt” and ad nauseam has proclaimed that “there was no collusion” between anybody in any way connected to him or his campaign and any other foreign entity, much less the Russians.

Through both leaks from official sources that have always made Washington the information sieve that it is, and solid investigative reporting from news outlets, most notably The New York Times and The Washington Post, all manner of evidence surfaced that seemed to substantiate the claim that through both  computer hacking and social media mischief, Russians sought to influence the last presidential election in manners that would aid the Trump campaign and hurt that of his opponent, Hillary Clinton.

But still, the president continued to scoff at the very notion and attack the media, both collectively and individually, for doing its job, calling members of the Fourth Estate, “the real enemies of the people,” a phrase made infamous by none other than one Josef Stalin.

And then came the week that time will determine to have been either the beginning of the end or the end of the beginning.

Having earlier nabbed several Trump campaign and/or administration officials for lying about their contacts with Russians, Mueller’s team dropped a very big and significant shoe, indicting 12 Russian Federation intelligence officials, by name, setting out in painstaking detail how they orchestrated and carried out a cyber attack on the 2016 election with the intent of aiding Trump and hurting Clinton.

At last, there appeared to be proof positive of Russian involvement. But Trump was unmoved, continuing only his chorus of “no collusion.”

Then came the humiliation in Helsinki.

Alternately described as a “summit” and then just a “meeting,” Trump and Russian President and ex-KGB Col. Vladimir Putin met for two hours alone, save interpreters, in the Finnish capital, then emerged for a joint press conference that evoked — rightly or wrongly — echoes of 80-year-ago Munich and cries of appeasement.

Putin was dominant; Trump dominated.

Trump talked tough as a candidate, but on the stage in Helsinki, which was at that moment the biggest stage in the world, he wimped out. The American president who claimed to be the Alpha Male, was dwarfed into obsequiousness by another who actually was.

When a reporter asked if Trump believed the entire U.S. intelligence community’s assessment that Russia interfered in the election or Putin’s denial, Trump sided with Putin.

And now, we know he knew better. Now we know he has known better all along.

It never was a hoax.

It never was a witch hunt.

Two weeks before he was even inaugurated, on Jan. 6, 2016, then CIA Director John Brennan, National Intelligence Director James Clapper, NSA Director Mike Rodgers and FBI Director James Comey went to Trump Tower and showed the president-elect emails and texts proving that the Russian government attacked the U.S. election and that Putin directed it.

Trump has known since before he ever took the oath of office that which he has consistently denied and cynically dismissed ever since.

But will that matter, even a whit, to those who hold this oh, so flawed a leader in such reverence? Will the weight of a year and a half’s worth of knowing, wanton deception be enough to make even the smallest crack in the support of a man whose relationship with his followers seems more cult-like every day?

The answer to those questions, like that of a far more basic one, has a lot more to do with what folks want to believe than with fact. Now, right on cue, Donald Trump is back to calling the Russia investigation a hoax.

Do you believe him or your lyin’ eyes?

Ray Mosby is editor and publisher of the Deer Creek Pilot in Rolling Fork.