But toward his enemies, a group that included not only Democrats like Nancy Pelosi and Adam Schiff, but also former FBI Director James Comey and current Republican Senator Mitt Romney, he was vindictive. The charges were “bullshit.” His adversaries were evil, vicious, corrupt “dirty cops.”

Read: Why Trump is the favorite in 2020

Trump didn’t take any questions, but there was no need to ask whether he felt vindicated. Obviously, he did. Despite the insistence of some Republican senators that Trump had learned that he couldn’t simply coerce foreign election interference, he again insisted over and over that his behavior had been “perfect.” Nor, moreover, was there any need to ask whether he could forgive and forget. That is clearly out of the question.

Trump has shown throughout his short career in politics that he knows how to win, even when the odds are against him, as they were in the 2016 GOP primary and that year’s general election. He has also shown that he has no idea how to take the win and move on. He spent much of the 2016 general-election campaign continuing to dwell on his upset primary victories over candidates favored by the establishment. He has never stopped dwelling on the 2016 election. And with a chance to put impeachment behind him and capitalize on momentum, he chose confrontation instead.

This is no great surprise, just as it is no surprise that the president delivered a new barrage of lies and conspiracy theories in his statement—even though his weakness for bogus claims helped get him impeached. Trump has never previously expressed grace in any way, so it’d be surprising if he were gracious now. If you keep winning, why change your style? Yet the unorthodox response is nonetheless worth noting, the latest example of my colleague James Fallows’s description of so much of the Trump phenomenon as shocking but not surprising.

What is not clear is what cost, if any, the vindictiveness might have. Trump is flying high at the moment, on the back of his best week as president. Perhaps he’s about to cruise toward reelection in November, when he has many advantages. But dangers abound. Impeachment remains popular with the American electorate overall; majorities say that he abused his power.

Beyond that, declining to move on narrows what Trump can accomplish, just as it has limited his accomplishments thus far. (The president once again claimed implausibly and falsely that he has accomplished more than any other president in his first term.) There are some things that Trump can do without the Democratic House of Representatives. The most prominent is appointing federal judges, and his success there helped keep Republican senators almost completely unified around him, save Romney. To pass legislation, however, he needs both houses of Congress.

Like Trump, House Democrats face a post-impeachment dilemma. Do they try to get back to legislating and seek common ground with the White House and the Senate? Or do they reopen investigations, maintain their pressure on Trump, and perhaps subpoena John Bolton to testify?