I’ll say this for Paul Ryan, his little community-theater Hamlet act turned out to be pretty smart. He waited until Donald Trump was having one of his worst weeks, as the “complete scam artist” story seemed to be taking hold, then unleashed the least-surprisng endorsement of all time, which will lead to breathless headlines about how Trump is “unifying the party.”

It was a sharp two-man game of 3-card monte, with Ryan shuffling at the table and Trump luring in the marks, designed to sucker the dimmest coneys in the media. Ryan got to pretend he was smart and thoughtful, and Trump got to pretend there were a few different sides of the Republican Party for him to win over. It looks like dominoes are falling, but this was all preordained.