When Jack Abramoff dominated Washington lobbying in the 1990s and early 2000s, he observed that there were two kinds of people in town: those who “get the joke” and those who don’t. Those who got the joke understood that all the city’s talk of ideas and principles was flimflam to conceal self-enrichment at the public’s expense. Those who didn’t—didn’t.

On the same day that Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene resigned, The New York Times reported accusations that President Donald Trump’s handpicked director of the Kennedy Center, Richard Grenell, had used the fine-arts institution’s $268 million budget to dole out favors and enrich friends and allies. If the claims—which Grenell disputes—are correct, Abramoff would recognize a fine example of “getting the joke.”

Greene did not get the j

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