smell a rat

For any of this representative democracy stuff to work, it has to mean something when GOP politicians look up from nibbling on the scraps of the president's long-forgotten past grievances and say, "I smell a rat."

Did you smell a rat in Season 1?

She speaks like a refugee from a 1940s potboiler — “Something’s fishy here. I smell a rat” and “Listen, Slick, nothing would make me happier than to put that girl in a box marked return to sender” — but with a patina of acquired elegance.

"By the end of the message, she seemed to have worked herself into a complete frenzy and was throwing around wild accusations. 'I smell a rat here. It is more than the usual red tape, incompetence and bureaucracy. That's expected! I believe there is corruption here at the highest levels'," he said.

"I know enough to smell a rat. There's something going on here that they're not telling us. I just don't know what it is."