During the heyday of the Soviet Union, communist bureaucrats had a nickname for the average credulous citizen who regurgitated the regime’s propaganda. Such a person was called a polezni durak – in translation, a useful fool, a naif who allowed himself to be manipulated by Moscow.

I never thought I’d live to see the day when this infection would spread to the United States of America – to House dupes like Devin Nunes and Jim Jordan; to the Senate where Republicans will likely sit as jurors in judgement of Donald Trump – but alas, this is now the world as we know it.

Exhibit A is Louisiana Republican John Kennedy, who plays the useful fool on national TV, thus disgracing his country. Yesterday on Meet the Press, he recited the Russian disinformation that he’d shared a week earlier on Fox News. He said that Ukraine invaded in our 2016 election, seeking yet again to blame Ukraine for Russia’s well-documented crimes. His fallback spin – classic false equivalence – was that “both Russia and Ukraine meddled in the 2016 election,” because a few Ukraine leaders had complained about candidate Trump “on social media.”

Host Chuck Todd then asked a key question: “A couple of weeks ago, U.S. senators were briefed after (national security aide) Fiona Hill’s testimony that actually this entire effort to frame Ukraine for the Russian meddling of 2016 – you just made this case – that actually this is a Russian intelligence propaganda campaign in order to get people like you to say these things about Ukraine. You apparently were briefed about this in the United States Senate by intelligence officials. Are you at all concerned you’re doing Russian intelligence work here?”

Kennedy: “I was not briefed.”

Todd: “You didn’t attend a briefing like that?”

Kennedy: “No…I wasn’t briefed.”

So he doesn’t care about the U.S. intelligence community consensus. What about what Fiona Hill said during her House testimony? (Hill cited the U.S. intelligence consensus and warned that peddling lies about Ukraine complicity “is a fictional narrative that has been perpetrated and propagated by Russian security services…They seed disinformation.”)

Kennedy’s response: “Dr. Hill is entitled to her opinion.”

Todd then posed one of the most crucial questions of our benighted era: “When does ‘opinion’ become fact? Does 17 intelligence services saying (it’s fact), does every western intelligence ally saying Russia did this? At what point is it no longer ‘opinion’?”

Undeterred, Kennedy declared without evidence that Ukraine’s 2016 leadership “actively worked” for Hillary Clinton – prompting Todd to point out that “the only other person selling this argument outside the United States is Vladimir Putin. This is what he said on November 20th: ‘Thank God nobody is accusing us anymore of interfering in U.S. elections. Now they’re accusing Ukraine. Well, let them sort this out among themselves.’…You have done exactly what the Russian operation is trying to get American politicians to do. Are you at all concerned that you’ve been duped?”

Kennedy: “No.”

Like the rest of his Senate Republican colleagues, Kennedy will be a trial juror after Trump is impeached. But there will be no justice if he and his allies take on the task with their minds already made up. Trump believes Russia’s crackpot lie that Ukraine did the ’16 dirt – one big big reason why he sought to squeeze Ukraine by holding up military aid until Ukraine vowed to “investigate” – but if Kennedy and the rest of the Republicans really buy that Russian lie, then presto, Trump will skate.

Michael Gerson, the reality-based conservative commentator, wrote the other day: “Politicians such as Kennedy must know the truth about Russia aggression, but still they choose to suck up to the president by reflecting his mania and sharing his blind spots. Loyalty to Trump among Republicans is proved by the loosening of all other loyalties, to truth, to honesty, and to the national good. By this measure, Kennedy is profoundly loyal to the president.”

All of which prompts me to quote a passage from the current national Republican platform. The topic is Russia: “Repressive at home and reckless abroad, their policies imperil the nations which regained their self-determination upon the collapse of the Soviet Union. We will meet the return of Russian belligerence with the same resolve that led to the collapse of the Soviet Union.”

Given the GOP’s blind loyalty to dear leader – at the expense of truth, honesty and the national good – it’s clear that the plezni durak party needs to tweak that outdated plank.