CHARLOTTE, N.C.—On Friday night, the President* of the United States held one of his now-familiar rallies here. Friday was the day that law enforcement arrested the man allegedly behind the attempted murder by bombing of two ex-presidents, one ex-senator and Secretary of State, several members of Congress, and an odd lot of pundits, newspeople, and other stars of cable television who for whatever reason had touched off his fevered brain.

Friday was the day that a heavily armed man in Kentucky tried to shoot up an African American church and, foiled because the door to the church was locked, went next door and killed two African American people at a grocery store. Friday was the day before a gunman shot up a synagogue in Pittsburgh in the country's 275th mass shooting of 2018. This is how the president* of the United States began his address on Friday night as his adoring acolytes clapped and cheered.

BEFORE GOING ANY FURTHER I BRIEFLY WANT TO ADDRESS THE PACKAGES AND DEVICES MAILED TO A NUMBER OF HIGH-PROFILE INDIVIDUALS AS YOU KNOW, THE SUSPECT HAS BEEN CAPTURED.

"Packages and devices."

"A number of high-profile individuals."

Drew Angerer Getty Images

He couldn't say "bombs." Worse, he couldn't even say any names. He couldn't say, "Barack and Michelle Obama," or "Bill and Hillary Clinton," or "Maxine Waters," or "John Brennan," or even "CNN." But he found room later in his speech to use some of their names to draw adoring applause and angry chants from the mindless drones who turn out to watch him stroke himself, and all of them, until the ragegasm rises and sends them spiraling upwards into orgiastic glee in the misfortune of others.

He went on to explain why he, himself, and all of them, were the real victims of the past week. We quote from the CSPAN transcript of his remarks so that all of the audience reaction is available.

THEY DO HAVE A MAJOR ROLE TO PLAY AS FAR AS TONE. [CHEERS AND APPLAUSE] AND WE ALL SAY THIS IN ALL SINCERITY BUT IT IS CONSTANT UNFAIR COVERAGE WITH DEEP HOSTILITY AND NEGATIVE ATTACKS. YOU KNOW, THAT. THAT ONLY SERVES TO DRIVE PEOPLE APART AND TO UNDERMINE HEALTHY DEBATE FOR EXAMPLE, WE HAVE SEEN TRYING TO SCORE POINTS AGAINST ME IN THE REPUBLICAN PARTY WITH SINISTER ACTIONS FROM ONE INDIVIDUAL. [BOOING] A BERNIE SANDERS SUPPORTER TRIED TO MURDER CONGRESSIONAL REPUBLICANS IN SEVERELY WOUNDED A GREAT MAN NAMED STEVE SCALISE AND OTHERS, WE DID NOT USE THAT ATTEMPT OF MASS MURDER FOR POLITICAL GAIN BECAUSE THAT WOULD HAVE BEEN WRONG AND WOULD HAVE BEEN THE WRONG THING TO DO. [APPLAUSE]

Sean Rayford Getty Images

WHERE DO WE BLAME THE RADICAL LEFT EVERY TIME SOMEBODY DESTROYS PROPERTY AND CREATES MAYHEM BUT THE MEDIA TRIES TO ATTACK THE INCREDIBLE AMERICANS WHO SUPPORT OUR MOVEMENT TO GIVE POWER BACK TO THE PEOPLE THAT IS WHAT THE MOVEMENT IS. OUR SUPPORTERS ARE SOME OF THE MOST HONEST, WONDERFUL HARD-WORKING PATRIOTIC PEOPLE ON THE FACE OF GOD'S EARTH THEY FOLLOW OUR LAWS AND PAY TAXES GO TO CHURCH AND CONTRIBUTE TO CHARITY AND LOYAL TO OUR COUNTRY ALL THEY WANT IS A GOVERNMENT THAT IS LOYAL TO THEM.

"CNN sucks," the audience replied. "CNN sucks."

This was the first one of these that I've attended since the campaign and, if you're not there to have your anger G-spot stimulated, you realize quite quickly that there is absolutely no news value to anything he says at these gatherings. The only things that are compelling about them anymore are the larger contexts within which they take place, and this past week was a larger context to beat them all. The news value lies in how those larger contexts affect what is said at the rallies and, if the larger context doesn't affect the president*'s appearance at all, that's certainly a story, too.

Sean Rayford Getty Images

But, on Friday, within the larger context of a nationwide attempted political murder spree, the president*'s remarks centered primarily on his own greatness, and on how unfair it is that his greatness is not universally acknowledged and applauded.

BUT DESPITE ALL OF THIS 94 PERCENT OF THE PRESS THAT I GET IS NEGATIVE EVEN WHEN I DO SOMETHING WONDERFUL. [BOOING] EVEN WHEN WE DO GREAT THINGS LOOK AT NORTH KOREA. HOW GOOD ARE WE DOING? [CHEERS AND APPLAUSE] GOING ON WITH THEM MORE THAN 70 YEARS THEY SAY HE'S NOT MOVING FAST ENOUGH. FAST ENOUGH? IF I WASN'T HERE YOU WOULD HAVE ENDED UP IN A WORLD WAR. WATCH.

I EVEN HEARD TODAY ON FOX WE HAD A GREAT MEETING WITH VLADIMIR PUTIN AND THAT IF THEY SAY NO. WE HAD A GREAT MEETING AND THEY PLAY UP AS NEGATIVE AS THEY CAN. WE HAVE ALL THE CARDS WE ARE THE BANK EVERYBODY WANTS TO ATTACK AND ROB AND STEAL FROM. [CHEERS AND APPLAUSE] BUT THEY MADE IT LOOK AS NEGATIVE. THAT WAS A GREAT MEETING THAT I HAD.

Of course, there's a lie embedded in there. If he had lost the election, we would not have had a world war. The lies are not even the news any more. Other presidents indeed have drawn large crowds in the cities he's now visiting. (This is a trope that goes beyond weird.) He did not hear about the greatness of Judge Brett Kavanaugh "10 years ago." If he'd met Brett Kavanaugh 10 years ago, he'd have tried to sell him a shoddily-built condo. There very likely wasn't a "big tough guy" who came up to him backstage on Friday night "with tears in his eyes" to thank him for "saving the country."

Sean Rayford Getty Images

(On the electric Twitter machine, the indefatigable Daniel Dale of The Toronto Star has been tracking this mysterious and weepy big tough guy, who seems to turn up backstage at every rally, but Dale took Friday night off, and good for him.)

But all of that pales next to the fact that he came to the stage Friday night apparently utterly unaffected by the events that took place in the country of which he is the president*—or, at least, utterly unaffected by anything beyond how it affected him, his public image, and the possible utility of the events to his cheap political ends. That is an ongoing news story, and it's terrifying.

His administration* is like him now. In 1992, I covered the trial of Jeffrey Dahmer in Milwaukee. I sat through the entire thing. The frightening thing about the defendant was how there wasn't an ounce of light in him. He was a blank. He was there, but you'd be hard-pressed to confirm that an actual human being was sitting at the defense table. That is this administration*—dead-eyed, almost reptilian in its cold-blooded ability to exist outside the context of what's going on with the citizens of the country that it was elected to serve. It is as blank-staring as an abandoned casino on the Atlantic City strip.

Police gather outside the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh, where a mass shooter killed at least four people Saturday. Jeff Swensen Getty Images

That, of course, comes from the president*, but that instinct was ingrained in a certain portion of the country almost from its founding. A lot of the country's history involves trying to suppress that instinct. A lot of the country's history involves the failure of the country and its institutions to do so. It was waiting there to be activated by someone as remorselessly unaffected by the pain and suffering of ordinary Americans as this president* is.

Mr. Yeats has had himself quite a workout since January of 2017. But the line about the centre's not holding is not as prescient of our current situation as is the passage that comes next:

The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere/The ceremony of innocence is drowned.

Now there's another guy who rode that tide into a synagogue in Pittsburgh, wherein he drowned in actual blood an actual ceremony of innocence. The president* stood in the rain at Andrews Air Force Base Saturday and called for guns in places of worship and a wonderful, sleek, streamlined new death penalty. I had no interest in the president*'s remarks on the subject, because there would not be any life in them.

Respond to this post on the Esquire Politics Facebook page here.

Charles P. Pierce Charles P Pierce is the author of four books, most recently Idiot America, and has been a working journalist since 1976.

This content is created and maintained by a third party, and imported onto this page to help users provide their email addresses. You may be able to find more information about this and similar content at piano.io