A recurring theory is that President Donald Trump wants to be impeached, or that he is at least eager for the political brawl it represents. The New York Times’ Ross Douthat mused in September that Trump “might kind of want to be impeached” because, among other reasons, “the circus is the part of politics that he fundamentally enjoys.” Speaker Nancy Pelosi herself suggested in May that Trump “knows it’s not a good idea to be impeached, but the silver lining for him is then he believes that he would be exonerated by the United States Senate.”

That argument never made much sense. Impeachment is an irremovable stain on any presidency, and Trump knows it. On Tuesday night, he sent a letter to Pelosi to personally denounce the House’s imminent vote—just the third in the nation’s history. It is one of the strangest documents ever written by a president. The letter is alternatively a rant, a plea, a boast, a smear, a lie, and a threat—in other words, it is quintessentially Trumpian.

Trump framed the letter as a closing argument of sorts, one aimed at not only House lawmakers but also future generations of Americans. “While I have no expectation that you will do so, I write this letter to you for the purpose of history and to put my thoughts on a permanent and indelible record,” he wrote. “One hundred years from now, when people look back at this affair, I want them to understand it, and learn from it, so that it can never happen to another President again.”

It was an unusual tone for Trump, who rarely seems to contemplate his legacy or place in American history. The rest of the letter was more true to form. Trump characterizes the impeachment process and its backers as everything but criminal and treasonous. “By proceeding with your invalid impeachment, you are violating your oaths of office, you are breaking your allegiance to the Constitution, and you are declaring open war on American democracy,” he said.

The letter is six pages long. It would be half that length if Trump removed the personal insults aimed at Pelosi and her colleagues. He offers a litany of complaints: Democrats, he says, have “developed a full-fledged case of what many in the media call Trump Derangement Syndrome,” they “view democracy as [their] enemy” and have “decided to disgrace our country still further” instead of “putting our country first.” Many House Republicans made similar points in their floor speeches on Wednesday, assailing Democrats for orchestrating what they described as an illegitimate, partisan process.