Does it even matter any more that, on Monday, El Caudillo del Mar-a-Lago had another televised nutty in the White House? Does it matter more that, in the course of his televised nutty, the president* expressed virulent contempt for the Constitution he swore to preserve, protect, and defend. I mean, I was sitting there when he did it. I had to sit through that awful Roger Corman film of an inaugural address. Did I do that for naught?

Anyway, on Monday, the president* unburdened himself of the following thought-like objects.

On the war on terror:

"I’m the one who did the capturing. I’m the one who knows more about it than you people or fake pundits.”

On the whistleblower:

“I happen to think there probably wasn’t an informant. You know, the informant went to the whistleblower, the whistleblower had, you know, second-and-third-hand information. So was there actually an informant? Maybe the informant was Schiff!”

And then, the piece de resistance, in which Alexander Hamilton and James Madison become operatives of The Deep State...

“You people with this phony emoluments clause.”

I know he burbled on about George Washington and Barack Obama and Netflix and how unprecedented it is that he's not taking a salary. (Herbert Hoover didn't, nor did JFK.) But I think I briefly went to another place when he said that thing about the Emoluments Clause. How about the Bill of Rights? How about the powers of Congress? How about the impeachment provisions? What other parts of the Constitution does he consider "phony"?

All of them, Katie.

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