At a speech in Cincinnati on Wednesday, Donald Trump chose to focus attention on two damaging stories about himself. Photograph by Luke Sharrett / Bloomberg via Getty

Here are two news ledes that were written on Wednesday night about a speech that Donald Trump gave at a rally in Cincinnati. One of them appeared in a major newspaper; the other I made up.

Seeking to exploit F.B.I. director James Comey’s damning statement about Hillary Clinton’s private e-mail system, Donald J. Trump flew to the swing state of Ohio on Wednesday, where he portrayed the presumptive Democratic nominee as untrustworthy and reckless when it comes to protecting America’s national security.

Donald J. Trump on Wednesday offered a defiant defense of his campaign’s decision to publish an image widely viewed as anti-Semitic—saying he regretted deleting it—and vigorously reaffirmed his praise of Saddam Hussein, the murderous Iraqi dictator.

If you thought the first effort was the genuine one, you obviously haven’t been watching closely these past two months, as Trump, like a silent-movie comic, has gone from calamity to calamity, each one more bruising than the last. This time, he may have surpassed himself. Given a desperately needed opportunity to score some points on an opponent who is still well ahead of him in terms of money and organization, and also a good ways out front in the national opinion polls, Trump chose to focus attention on two damaging stories about himself. And he didn’t just mention them in passing. He discussed them at length, berating the media for being unfair to him.

At the start of his address, which went on for more than an hour, Trump did bring up Clinton’s e-mail server and Comey’s statement (which I wrote about on Tuesday). Consulting some notes that he said he had written, Trump mocked Clinton’s claims that she set up a private account for “convenience” and hadn’t sent any material that was marked classified, calling her a “dirty rotten liar.” Then he tossed his notes aside and moved on to the extemporaneous portion of his speech, which took up another fifty-five minutes or so, and which insured that his comments about Clinton would be overshadowed.

After complaining that the media had twisted his words about Saddam Hussein, Trump repeated his claim that the Iraqi dictator was effective at killing terrorists—a claim that has already earned him yet another rebuke from Paul Ryan, the Republican Speaker of the House. Then he brought up the controversy over the image of a six-pointed star, alongside a stack of money and the words “most corrupt candidate ever,” that one of his aides had posted on his Twitter account. (The aide later deleted the star and replaced it with a circle.) Over and over again, Trump insisted that the star hadn’t been intended to represent a Star of David—an argument that his campaign has been making for days already, presumably to the delight of the Clinton campaign.

In the political-campaigning industry, there is a tactic sometimes referred to as the “I am not a child molester” strategy, which consists of making a damaging claim about your opponent and forcing him or her to deny it. Trump didn’t just fall into this trap: he dove into it head first, and repeatedly. According to a tally by the Toronto Star_’s_ Daniel Dale, who tweeted a partial transcript of the speech, Trump said the word “star” twenty-eight times. And the candidate ended his tirade, which included repeated jabs at CNN, by adding a new twist to the story. Referring to the decision to replace the star, he said that he had told some of his campaign workers, “Too bad, you should have left it up. I would have rather defended it.”

This splenetic display evoked widespread wonderment. Maggie Haberman, Michael Barbaro, and Jonathan Mahler, the three New York Times reporters who were responsible for the second lede at the start of this post, accurately described it as “a striking display of self-sabotage from a presumptive presidential nominee.”

Others were less kind. Live-tweeting his response to the speech, John Podhoretz, the editor of Commentary and a New York Post columnist, wrote, “Trump whining that anyone would say he praised Saddam Hussein last night. The man is a mental patient.” Later, Podhoretz, a confirmed member of the Never Trump movement, added, “Just send the delegates this speech and lock them in a room and make them watch it all the way through.” He wasn’t the only one to wonder aloud if Trump had lost his marbles. Kyle Foley, a commentator for the conservative Web site Red State, wrote, “If you choose to support Trump, that is absolutely your prerogative, but he has proved tonight (and pretty much every night) that he is absolutely and certifiably insane.”

Among Democrats, reaction to Trump’s speech ran from delight to contempt. David Plouffe, a former senior adviser to President Obama, linked to a video of the event, saying, “Must watch and share.” Oliver Willis, a research fellow at Media Matters, the liberal watchdog site, commented, “Maybe clinton should use some of that financial advantage to buy prime time broadcast air time, and just run trump rallies.”

It is possible, of course, that Trump knows more about Presidential campaigning than the reporters, commentators, politicians, and political strategists who are poking fun at him, myself included. We have underestimated him before—this time last year. Once Trump gets to Cleveland, less than two weeks from now, the Presidential electorate will have another opportunity to take his measure. Perhaps a majority will like his populist patter and unhinged campaigning style, much as a plurality of the Republican primary electorate did.

Perhaps. But it is also possible that the conventional wisdom is right, and Trump is busy losing the election. Faced with a press that is no longer sitting back and allowing him to use it as his loudspeaker, he appears to have neither the self-discipline nor the paid-media strategy that is essential to deliver a focussed message. Comey’s public demolition of Clinton’s account of her personal e-mail system, and his charge that she and her staff were “extremely careless” in their handling of classified information, gave Trump a chance to reset his campaign. So far, he is blowing it.