The latest out of Moscow is really embarrassing. Had someone at the embassy or in the FSB been watching FX’s Reagan-era spy melodrama The Americans and actually thought this would work? It’s hard to believe even thirty years ago those wigs would have passed, but today? Come on, really?

It appears the White House may have gotten itself caught in the kabuki it played with the press on the Russian spies now swapped for some spies in Russian custody. But the timing of the kabuki suggests the target of the spy sting may not have been the illegals, but two Russian officials working under official cover.