Jessica Huseman, a political reporter for ProPublica, tweeted something remarkable after President Donald Trump’s press conference at the United Nations on Wednesday, which was itself remarkable.

“How ... do you write a story on rambling answers that make no sense? Can the story be that the president made no sense?” she mused.

Not only can it be — it should be. Watching an embattled Trump talk to reporters a day after Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi announced an impeachment inquiry was just the cherry on top of a wild media sundae being served the past couple of days.

“It was a bombshell of a day,” David Chalian, CNN’s political director, said, and he wasn’t wrong.

Stay tuned. There is a lot more to come. And it will challenge the media in ways we haven’t seen before.

There is no guarantee Trump will be impeached, of course, much less convicted and removed from office. But grab a seat in front of the television or computer screen while the process plays out, because news is breaking at an incredible pace, and the media are going to have to hang on for dear life just to keep up.

Have-phone-will-tweet

Trump being at the center of the story only complicates matters. He’s a have-phone-will-tweet president even when he’s not under fire. Separating what politicians say from the actual truth is often a necessary task for the people who cover them. In Trump’s case, it’s a duty magnified by an order of magnitude.

Bad for Trump, bad for national security:Ukraine investigation: Donald Trump's defense only makes him look worse

Here’s the pace of the way things are moving. Even as cable-news pundits batted around the fallout from Trump’s press conference, pointing out inaccuracies and ramblings, they were showing Pelosi walking into a secure room to view a whistleblower’s complaint — this on the afternoon of the morning when the White House released notes of Trump’s call to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, which is what started the latest mess in the first place.

It’s like watching “All the President’s Men” on TikTok.

Truly, it’s just one thing after another. During Trump’s media session at the U.N., he rambled, which isn’t unusual, but he did so in an almost resigned kind of way, which is unusual. And while the networks covering the event didn’t exactly fact-check in real time — well, most didn’t; more on that momentarily — many folks on Twitter did.

When it was over, CNN’s Wolf Blitzer talked about the president serving up mischaracterizations and such, but could not bring himself to utter the “L” word.

His colleague Jeffrey Toobin had no such qualms.

Calling Trump's lie a lie

“It was 40 minutes, and it was a torrent of lies,” Toobin said. “Just a torrent of lies.”

MSNBC’s Nicolle Wallace actually interrupted her network’s live coverage of Trump, saying, “The president isn’t telling the truth.”

A lesson in political patience:Nancy Pelosi's impeachment waiting game paid off. Americans will turn on Donald Trump.

Trump was saying that former Vice President Joe Biden and his son, Hunter, had been investigated by the Ukrainians already. (At the heart of all this is a phone call from Trump to Zelensky, in which he asks Zelensky to “do us a favor” and, among other things, investigate Biden, a potential Trump challenger in next year’s election.)

“None other than the Wall Street Journal included in their report on Friday that the Ukrainians view this issue as having been investigated and adjudicated,” Wallace told viewers. “What’s amazing is that what Trump appears to be trying to do is turn his own impeachment into a deflection.”

Good for her. Reporters need to do this kind of thing more often. Viewers deserve not only some context but the facts.

You hear this a lot because it’s true: This isn’t normal. None of it. Neither the actions nor the coverage of them, which requires new methods and tools.

It couldn’t be more important. This is history unfolding before us, and it’s the job of the media to report and explain it fully and fairly — even if fairness means pointing out a lie. It’s no time for false equivalency. It’s time for the truth, as it happens. And it’s happening at a breakneck pace.

Bill Goodykoontz is a media critic at The Arizona Republic, where this column originally appeared. Follow him on Twitter: @goodyk.