The Whistleblower Protection Act of 1989 is pretty self-explanatory: It protects federal whistle-blowers who work for the government from, among other things, having their identity revealed and retaliatory action taken against them as a result of their complaint. Most people understand that violating this law is a big, flaming no-no. And then you have the president of the United States, who doesn’t understand anything and whose brain contents—loose teeth and Hamburger Helper—lead him to say things like this:

“We’re trying to find out [who the whistle-blower is]...when you have a whistle-blower that reports things that were incorrect, as you know, and you’ve probably now have figured it out, the statement I made to the president of the Ukraine—a good man, a nice man, new—was perfect, it was perfect, but the whistle-blower reported a totally different statement, like a statement that was not even made.... The call was perfect. When the whistle-blower reported it, he made it sound terrible. And then you have Adam Schiff, who, even worse, made up my words...which, I’ve never even seen a thing like that...he actually took words and made it up. The reason is that when he saw my call to the president of Ukraine it was so good that he couldn’t quote from it because there was nothing done wrong...so Adam Schiff decided, I can’t let this happen, so let me make up...[he] made up a phony call and read it to Congress...and it’s a disgrace. This whole thing is a disgrace. There’s been tremendous corruption, and we’re seeking it. It’s called drain the swamp. There’s been corruption on the other side, there’s been corruption like you’ve never seen. Now the new president of Ukraine ran on the basis of no corruption...and I believe that he really means it. But there was a lot of corruption having to do with the 2016 election against us, and we want to get to the bottom of it, and it’s very important that we do.”

There’s so much to unpack here, but for starters, the readout of the Ukraine call, released by the White House, closely matches the whistle-blower’s complaint. The reason that Trump thinks the unnamed intelligence official “report[ed] things that were incorrect” is because in his Big Mac–addled brain, it’s “perfect” and “good” to urge another country to dig up dirt on your political rival, and to withhold military aid while doing so. The content of the complaint and rough transcript are essentially the same, it’s just the takeaways that are different—the whistle-blower (and majority of the House) think Trump’s behavior was extremely troubling, while the president, who doesn’t even recognize corruption when he’s committing it himself, thinks it was perfection.

Then, of course, there’s the matter of Trump telling reporters he’s working on uncovering the identity of the whistle-blower, whose sources he suggested last week are spies who should be executed, like “in the old days.” Trump obviously doesn’t care about the laws protecting whistle-blowers from retaliation and having their identity revealed, and we know this not just based on his statements today and over the weekend—“like every American, I deserve to meet my accuser,” he tweeted Sunday—but as gleaned by one of his transparently self-serving pardons last year. (In April 2018, Trump pardoned Scooter Libby, who was convicted of perjury and obstruction of justice in connection with the disclosure of CIA officer Valerie Plame’s identity, which was punishment for her husband criticizing the Bush administration in a New York Times op-ed. Trump apparently saw a lot of similarities between himself and Libby, namely that they are both victims. “I don’t know Mr. Libby,” he said in a statement at the time, “but for years I have heard that he has been treated unfairly. Hopefully, this full pardon will help rectify a very sad portion of his life.”)

While Trump is too dumb to get that his attempt to unmask the whistle-blower is a gross abuse of power and violation of the law, others are not! Mark Zaid, one of the whistle-blower’s lawyers, said in a statement that his client’s identity must be protected, referring to Thursday’s testimony from the acting director of National Intelligence, Joseph Maguire. “As the acting DNI testified last week, the law and policy supports protection of the identity of the whistle-blower from disclosure and from retaliation. No exceptions exist for any individual,” Zaid said.