Trump’s follies, sheriff’s office dysfunction, and the case of the missing poodle — woof!

It takes an unwavering allegiance to the absurd, and a determined dedication to the delusional, to become a perennial political punch line. But thanks to the feckless follies of the Trump administration, and the amateurish antics of some of our city’s elected leaders, here we are.

Take the latest episode in our local franchise of Law and Disorder: Sheriff Rochelle Bilal’s Badges and Blunders — cue the dramatic “dun dun.”

Long story short: Someone needs to put out an APB on a four-legged fugitive.

Back in August, an SUV assigned to the Philadelphia Sheriff’s Office blew through a red light and caused a four-car crash — totaling about $40,000 in damage to the city-leased vehicle.

The SUV, a rental no less, was equipped with lights and sirens — you know, the kind of setup that screams “official law enforcement.” Except witnesses said the driver wasn’t an officer, but some young dude in a white tank top who fled the scene while holding a dog that appeared to be a poodle. Woof!

That should have raised all kinds of red flags, right? Same with the police report, made from the address of a high-ranking sheriff’s official three days after the crash. The complainant reported the vehicle was stolen while she was out of town. And the name on the report? Jane Doe.

Convenient, and oh, so curious.

But wait, it gets even weirder: The case then — poof — vanished ... until the sheriff’s office requested a replacement vehicle from Fleet Services in January. That’s when Bilal told my Inquirer colleagues she learned for the first time that “no one within her chain of command had reported the incident to them,” which is a major breach of protocol.

Only then did the sheriff’s office and the police department launch investigations, which are still ongoing.

If you’re wondering about the lack of urgency, remember that when it comes to fixing what’s long been broken in the sheriff’s office, few with any power to do something seem to be in a big hurry.

When Philly’s financial watchdog called for abolishing the office — along with the Register of Wills — last month, City Council President Kenyatta Johnson invoked the “Philly Shrug” and said he would review the board’s recommendations, but had no immediate plans to take action.

It’s enough to make your head spin, but it pales in comparison to the hijinks of the runaway clown car of cons in Washington.

Look at those mass deportation efforts — of “criminal immigrants,” claimed the Trump administration. They have instead ensnared U.S. citizens, authorized immigrants, and others who were unfairly deported, including a young barber, a gay makeup artist, and a professional soccer player. All because, somehow, their tattoos were “mistaken” for gang symbols.

In a rare moment of White House transparency, officials admitted a Maryland man was wrongly deported to a violent prison in El Salvador — years after an immigration judge had granted him protection from being sent back to face persecution by local gangs. But they brushed off the deportation that may amount to a death sentence as an “administrative error” they could do nothing about.

There was also that other recent error, when Donald Trump’s national security team thought it’d be a brilliant idea to swap classified intel (and emojis) on a Signal chat that — whoopsie — also included a journalist.

And then came Wednesday, when Trump announced sweeping tariffs on most of the U.S.’s trading partners, including — checks notes — remote islands that are home to mostly penguins and polar bears.

Add cold-climate carnivores to Trump’s ever-growing enemies list, I guess.

This, of course, was dubbed “Liberation Day” by the administration, a celebration of economic self-sabotage, as Trump and his mathematically challenged minions cheerfully imposed new tariffs. All oblivious to the warnings from economists that these moves would only inflate prices for ordinary Americans and liberate us from our hard-earned money.

If half of this were written into a novel, we’d laugh it off as too absurd to be believable. Even those of us who’ve been sounding the alarm since Trump first descended that gaudy golden escalator in 2015 barely imagined this kind of chaos.

But it’s our reality now — a reality as damning as it is ridiculous.

Because the real joke isn’t on the people turning our country into a bad sitcom. It’s on the rest of us, including those who voted for elected officials who, with each new scam, make a mockery of their offices — and us.