Infrastructure Week is one of the great running gags of this administration. It always seems to be Infrastructure Week, but President Business Deals is almost constitutionally incapable of staying on-topic. That's how we got such a remarkable Trumpian spectacle in Ohio on Thursday.

The speech was ostensibly about infrastructure, although it was really about his 2016 election victory, how no one had heard the word "trillion" until recently, how no one knows what community college is, and so much more that was irrelevant, untrue, or all of the above. Toronto Star reporter Daniel Dale was there to document the oratorical carnage, which was so extensive he had to timestamp each incident.

First up: the election.

2:09 p.m. — Trump begins with a reference to his election victory: “What a group. Remember, you can’t win unless you win the state of Ohio, right?”

In case you lost your calendar, we're getting on towards a year and a half out of the election. It's honestly surprising he didn't bring a copy of his Big, Beautiful Map.

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Then came The Wall:

2:14 p.m. — Trump falsely claims that a California project to replace a section of existing border wall...is indeed his own wall project...“We started building our wall. I’m so proud of it. We started. We started. We have $1.6 billion. And we’ve already started. You saw the pictures yesterday, and I said what a thing of beauty. And on September 28 we go further. And we’re gettin’ that sucker built. And you think that’s easy? People said, ‘Oh, has he given up on the wall?’ Nah, I never give up."

This is a lie. As we detailed yesterday, the photos Trump tweeted were of a project begun in 2009 to rebuild a section of '90s-era wall. It has nothing to do with his Big, Beautiful Wall.

And how about some foreign policy?

2:16 p.m. — Trump says the U.S. has been treated better on trade by its enemies than its allies: “Frankly our friends did more damage to us than our enemies."

Diplomacy!

Guns are a hot topic—let's have the president weigh in:

2:24 p.m. — Trump falsely claims, “We got rid of the bump stocks. The bump stocks now are under very strict control.” His administration’s proposed ban on the firearm device has not been finalized.

The lies flow so effortlessly—like he was born to do it.

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Next up, some historical revisionism on Middle East intervention.

2:34 p.m. — Trump falsely claims that he was opposed to the Iraq War “from the beginning.” He haltingly supported the war when radio host Howard Stern asked him in 2002, saying, “Yeah, I guess so. I wish the first time it was done correctly.”

Trump has frequently cited an interview with Esquire in which he expressed opposition to the war. Except, as we have detailed extensively, the interview took place in 2004—well after the war had begun and public support was weakening. It was a reasonable position for him to take, but it is not the same as always opposing the war.

There was more on Mideast policy:

2:35 p.m. — Trump appears to ad-lib a major foreign policy declaration that is at odds with his administration’s stated policy—claiming, with no details, that he will withdraw the U.S. military from Syria “very soon.”

“And by the way we’re knockin’ the hell out of ISIS. We’ll be coming out of Syria like very soon. Let the other people take care of it now. Very soon. Very soon. We’re coming out."

Forget proclamations by Twitter! Just have the president announce major military decisions via infrastructure speech. Remember when Trump used to say he wouldn't share his plans for Syria so our enemies wouldn't know what we were up to?

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And then, a meditation on war spending—and the word "trillion."

2:36 p.m. — Trump falsely claims, for the ninth time in office, that the U.S. has spent $7 trillion on Middle East wars...Trump then says, “Nobody ever heard of the word trillion until 10 years ago.”

First of all, the president believes that he can simply say anything, and if enough people believe it, it might as well be true. He also believes that if he did not know something, it could not have been known by anyone else, either.

At one point, the president showed off his nuanced understanding of recent political history.

2:39 p.m. — Trump expresses confusion about all of the judicial vacancies that greeted him upon entering office: “I don’t know why Obama left that. It was like a big beautiful present to all of us. Why the hell did he leave it?"

There were so many vacancies because Republicans embarked on an unprecedented campaign of obstruction to block Obama from carrying out his constitutional duty to appoint federal judges. Again, these are things the president could find out if he weren't fundamentally incurious about the world.

Exhibit C in "I didn't know so nobody knew":

2:45 p.m. — Trump says he does not know what a community college is. He says community colleges should be called vocational schools, though those are entirely different..."use vocational, because that’s what it’s all about. People know what that means. We don’t know what a community college means.”

To state the obvious, many people who are not the president know what a community college is.

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Then there was...this:

2:49 p.m. — Trump complains about an unnamed road in an unnamed state, which he says has been made too curvy. “Not good if you’re not feeling so good behind the wheel.”

Good Lord.

And then there was this one-two punch:

2:54 p.m. — Trump says America’s infrastructure is “like, in many cases, a Third World country.”

2:58 p.m. — Trump tells workers: “You’re restoring pride in this country again. Our country had very little pride. Look back. See what was happening. Our country had very little pride.”

But it was all a prelude to the thrilling conclusion, where Trump embarked on a sweeping oratory that sought to unite Americans of all stripes under the banner of rebuilding the country's crumbling infrastructure, an initiative that would create jobs, stimulate the economy, and improve the safety of American public works.

Just kidding—he talked about Roseanne's ratings.

2:59 p.m. — “Even look at Roseanne! I called her yesterday! Look at her ratings! Look at her ratings! I got a call from Mark Burnett, he did The Apprentice, he’s a great guy. He said, ‘Donald, I called just to say hello and to tell you, did you see Roseanne’s ratings?’ I said, ‘Mark, how big were they?’ They were unbelievable! Over 18 million people! And it was about us! They haven’t figured it out! The fake news hasn’t quite figured it out yet! They have not figured it out! So that was great. And they haven’t figured it out. But they will. And when they do, they’ll become much less fake. May take a while, but it’s happening.”

What a time to be alive. Trump finished up with something about "working with everybody" to restore American pride. It's going to take a lot more than infrastructure to do that.

Dale's entire account of this proud moment in American history is worth a read.

Jack Holmes Politics Editor Jack Holmes is the Politics Editor at Esquire, where he writes daily and edits the Politics Blog with Charles P Pierce.

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