Happy day after “Smoking Gun Day.”

When it’s all said and done — and it’s a dead certainty that after Ambassador Bill Taylor’s presentation yesterday that something will be done — one the greatest ironies of the Trump era will be how much the demise of his tabloid reign of blunder and vulgarity was the result of him being led around by the exact same kind of wildly implausible right-wing fantasy theories.

We’ll debate for years how much Trump actually believed this latest one, about how the nefarious Ukrainians and not the “very strong and powerful” Russians — were the real culprits in the election meddling of 2016. Not that it even matters if he even thought it was true. But the fact that Rudy Giuliani, working off the FoxNews/talk radio playbook, managed to convince Trump this was an angle with real marketing possibilities, says everything about Trump’s strategic acuity and his sense of the gullibility of his base.

Functionally illiterate in terms of understanding the Constitution and basic rules of presidential behavior, Trump has lived by the sewer-dipped sword of “sigh and gasp” inducing right-wing lunacies. From Obama’s birth certificate, to immigrant invasions, to Hillary’s e-mails and on and on … and on and on, his presidency, if we can even call it that, has been a ceaseless hopscotch back and forth from every bit of ludicrous nutjobbery belched up by conservative America’s most paranoid and cynical circus performers … a profitable shtick fueled by a shrewd assist from Vladimir Putin’s troll farms.

And now Trump is about to die, or at least be impeached, by that same tabloid-crazy sword.

If you’re Trump, the scariest words uttered by anyone in the moments after Taylor dropped his hand grenade on the “no quid pro quo” defense was Mitch McConnell saying, “I don’t recall any conversations with the president about that [Ukrainian] phone call.”

It’s always likely, of course, that Moscow Mitch was lying. He places no great value in public truth-telling. But by in effect saying, “The President is on his own on this one”, McConnell is signaling that the door is fully open to letting this impeachment thing go where it may.

Not that McConnell himself — up for reelection in Kentucky where at last glance he had the lowest approval of any incumbent Senator in the country — would ever vote for conviction. But if you’re someone way smarter than Trump, you’d be explaining to POTUS, when he isn’t getting political advice from “Fox & Friends”, that McConnell is signalling that he will not require his nervous Republican Senate colleagues to vote in lockstep for Trump’s acquittal.

I continue to believe that McConnell is actively considering a Mike Pence presidency. Due diligence requires as much from him. And that he will accept Pence — i.e. allow a Senate conviction of Trump — provided he’s confident the electoral blowback from Trump’s deranged Second Amendment/evangelical/racist base will be minimal, or at least less bad than with Trump on the ticket again in 2020.

That said, one of McConnell’s key tasks when — not if — Pelosi hands him the articles of impeachment, will be to protect his most vulnerable members. Maine’ Susan Collins (second only to McConnell in terms of miserable home-state popularity), Cory Gardner in Colorado, Thom Tillis in North Carolina, Martha McSally in Arizona — all up for reelection in 2020 — certainly understand the risk in putting their names to a vote acquitting a now demonstrably corrupt and incompetent Trump.

I have no idea how exactly Mitch will avoid a vote. But based on our long, sordid history with the man, you know he’s got his Federalist Society brain trust working on any permutation, truncation or contortion of the Senate trial process that gets him out of Trump and on to Pence with the least damage to his precious majority.

There are a few trusting souls who believe Chief Justice John Roberts will not put up with a historic dump of McConnell treachery. But me, I prefer to expect the worst.

Anyway, with Ambasador Taylor’s assiduously documented smoking gun, the game of impeachment is fully afoot. Which means it is time … again … to turn to the great Bette Davis …

“Fasten you seat belts, it’s going to be a bumpy night.”