“It’s live? It’s happening now?”

On Friday morning, I scrambled to livestream U.S. President Donald Trump phoning in to Fox & Friends, sure I’d missed the best bits, but no. He spent 47 minutes extruding a monologue, which means I watched three of Fox’s worst and dumbest hosts sitting on a white couch — presumably throw pillows are unpresidential — staring blankly at the camera as a troubled man’s rant to the planet escalated.

Two identical manspreaders (Brian Kilmeade, dumb, and Steve Doocy, dumber) bracketed a woman in red (Ainsley Earhardt) whose purpose was almost entirely visual.

If this were an audition, it would be a tough one: they were playing the role of bad journalists sitting and listening approvingly to the disembodied voice of a man ranting at clouds about invented international conspiracies against him by land, sea and air, while not breaking character.

Immobilized, the Fox hosts had no tools beyond facial expressions and hands. It went like this. Blank look. Quizzical look. Tilted head. Alert expression. Muted chuckle. Frown. Puzzlement. Respectful nod. Nod on repeat. Hands on thighs. Fingers interlocked. Hands in prayer. Rub hands together. Worried look. Obedient nod. Straining to hear. Judicious expression. Attempted joke. Apology. Intent look. Muted laughter. Nods of agreement. Wide smiles.

The President Trump character had a tough role, an improv monologue that rolled along like a poorly maintained roller-coaster about to hurl itself off the tracks, or rocks thrown off an overpass onto the cars below by teenagers. It was a stream of consciousness combination of Fidel Castro giving a four-hour speech, your mean grandpa on acid, Alec Baldwin giving the seven-minute sales talk in “Glengarry Glen Ross” but without pauses and repeated seven times in a row, and whatever Richard Nixon said in 1973 to the portraits of former presidents as he drunkenly wandered through the White House.

Here it is, the best of Trump, Nov. 22, 2019, 8 a.m. phone call from the White House:

“Obama, biggest scandal in the history of our country, Obama, Ukraine, server, CrowdStrike, Fiona Hill, Germany and France not putting up money, rebuilding military, two Supreme Court justices, 182 federal judges, bad people, subpoenas, Mueller, FBI lovers, fake news, phoney New York Times, phoney Washington Post, Schiff, sick puppy, Russia, crazy Nancy, growing dust, quid pro quo, Ukraine corrupt, this guy, David Holmes, I can’t hear people making calls, Joe Biden, I want nothing, the kid, millions and millions, corruption, Germany and France, Volker, don’t know him, Sondland, hardly know him, Perry, great guy, Rudy legendary, iconic figure, she’s a woman, Zelenskiy, gravy train, wouldn’t hang my picture, not an angel, not a baby, I know a lot about stardom, star, star, star, witnesses, whistleblower, I want a trial, impeachment, phone call, sleazy, crazy, Adam Schiff, nutjob, perfect call, 196-0, vicious, I don’t know who the whistleblower is, fake corrupt media machine, Shifty Schiff, I know life, Never Trumpers, nuts, scam, swing state, popular vote, electoral college, hoax, witch hunt, Comey is a disgusting human being, phoney, McCabe, 100 miles of wall, electric, Army Corps, al-Baghdadi, biggest terrorist in the last 100 years, drones, bulldozer, blowtorches, wall is electrified, Pelosi, Schumer, Joe, mentally cracking up, Alfred E. Neuman, Pocahontas, beating up veterans, Afghanistan, Taliban, Syria, I kept the oil, tariffs, Xi, I didn’t like his word ‘equality,’ crummy vice-president, floor to ceiling, Hong Kong obliterated, please don’t do that, best in history, greatest economy we’ve ever had, the crook and Hillary, farmers, China, a tremendous deal, tremendous deals.”

I would offer you a better summary at twice the length by listening a third time but neither of us want me to do that.

There you have it, the gist of Donald Trump. “The consistency of the brain has been variously likened to tofu, soft butter, or a slightly overcooked Jell-O pudding,” writes Bill Bryson in his new book “The Body: A Guide for Occupants.” All our brains are like that, which means perhaps that Trump’s brain is crisping.

As with all of us, the stringy neurons in Trump’s brain have axons that split into 400,000 dendrites. They communicate with other neurons by means of “trillions and trillions of connections.” (Bryson sounds like Trump here). There are as many connections “in a single cubic centimetre of brain tissue as there are stars in the Milky Way,” he quotes neuroscientist David Eagleman.

Incidentally, Bryson says it’s a myth that we use only 10 per cent of our brains. In fact, he says, our brains — including Trump’s — are working at full throttle, which makes us say, “Nah, I don’t believe that.”

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I am not saying we all have better brains than Trump’s. We’re all working with the same pinkish-white ball. My brain, like his, is packed with floating thoughts revisited 20,000 times until they calcify and we conk out permanently.

Mine are the lyrics to a 1980 chart-topping disco hit called Funkytown (Won’t You Take Me Down). His is “I am the greatest president in the history of presidents,” and perhaps therein lies the key.

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