Have you ever noticed how hell occasionally freezes over? It happens at the most unexpected times.

For an example: Fox News’s Bill “Blowhard” O’Reilly now sounds like the rational, reasonable one while talking to Donald J. Trump about Russian strongman/president Vladimir Putin.

O’Reilly interviewed the president and it will be broadcast tonight before the Super Bowl. In the interview, O’Reilly asks Trump if he respects Putin. Trump says he does; he adds that respect doesn’t mean necessarily that he likes him. O’Reilly then calls Putin a “killer,” to which the president responds that the world is “full of killers” and then asks, rhetorically I presume, “Well, you think our country is so innocent?”

Holy crap, Mr. President!

It’s one thing to say it while you’re running for president, sir. It’s quite another when you actually are the president, representing — despite what you might have said to the contrary — the “greatest nation on Earth.”

The president actually seems to equate the allegations that Russian government goons have killed journalists and political dissenters with activity that occurs on our side. Have our forces killed innocent people by mistake? No one denies that. Putin’s thugs, though, reportedly have engaged in some quite different behavior for many years. I cannot find a lick of symmetry here.

I hope to watch the entire interview tonight. But from what I’ve been able to glean from reporting on it, the president — yet again — has crossed another line that separates decorum from demagoguery.