I was sapped — if not quite of the will to live, then of the will to tweet, to Google and to surf the cable channels, where his furious mien and curious mane are ubiquitous. What I was feeling was beyond Trump fatigue and bigger than Trump exhaustion. It was Trump enervation. Trump enfeeblement.

And within it I saw a ray of hope.

Until now it has been unclear to me precisely how Trump ends. His manifestly rotten character hasn’t alienated his supporters, who are all too ready with rationalizations and fluent in trade-offs. They’re also unbothered by many of his missteps, because he has sold those to a cynical electorate as media fables and rivals’ fabrications. He’s so enterprising and assiduous at pointing the finger elsewhere that many voters have lost their bearings. Defeat is victory. Oppressors are liberators. Corruption is caring. Mar-a-Loco is Shangri-La.

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But Americans of all persuasions recognize melodrama when it keeps smacking them in the head, and he has manufactured a bruising degree of it. They’re not keen on Washington or politics, so they don’t care for the way in which fevered discussions of both have become so pervasive as to be ambient.

They’re woozy and wiped out, and they can’t lay their depletion on the doorsteps of frustrated Democrats and Fake News. The president’s tweets speak for themselves, in both volume and vitriol. The president’s thunder is deafening without any amplification by CNN or MSNBC.