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Jesus H. Christ sampling His own product, that was a next-level wasting of the time.

El Caudillo del Mar-a-Lago gave his first big-boy Oval Office speech Tuesday night, in which he went back to the American Carnage theme, blaming the Democrats for a) the crimes of undocumented migrants, b) the government shutdown, and c) the utter chaos within his own administration*. In 2016, we were going to have a big, beautiful wall with a big, beautiful door for which Mexico was going to pay. Now, we're going to have some kind of "barrier" that will be financed through drug busts and a trade deal that hasn't passed Congress yet.

Obviously, as CNN reported, somebody in the administration* with an ounce of functioning gray matter convinced him that the whole "national emergency" bit would result in his being buried under a hail of writs, and perhaps an actual rebellion in rural Texas, so that particular saber stayed unrattled. Instead, he begged for a "45-minute meeting" with Congressional Democrats designed to get the country out of the ditch into which his conduct has driven it.

Pool Getty Images

Afterwards, Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi, engaging in some serious American Gothic cosplay, made almost their entire rebuttal about the government shutdown occasioned by the president*'s tantrum. They weren't terrific but they didn't make you yearn for the sudden arrival of an asteroid, either, and they gave nervous Republicans an opening to come deal with them no matter what the president* wants them to do.

Otherwise, nothing fcking happened.

Most of the lies weren't even new. The most fundamental lie of all—that there is a "crisis" on the border demanding immediate and draconian solutions—was the basis for all the other old lies that followed. Undocumented migrants do not commit proportionally more crimes than do native-born people. Drugs, particularly fentanyl, are not coming across the border through the desert but, rather, through the legitimate ports of entry. He didn't hit the whole terrorist thing very hard, probably because that canard got laughed off the stage over the weekend, but he replaced talk of the Evil 4000 with another recitation from his Murder Book, and some maundering about the very real "humanitarian crisis" that his own policies have caused.

Members of American Legion Post 416 watch President Donald Trump speak on January 8, 2019 in Encinitas, California. Sandy Huffaker Getty Images

The only really new lie—and it's of a piece with his lunatic suggestion that all his living predecessors have encouraged him to build his big, beautiful, and stupid wall—was that the Democrats have forced him to change the building materials from concrete to steel, which is not something I have heard any Democrat say.

So why are some of them so opposed to the big, beautiful, stupid wall, anyway?

There was a bit of new spin as the president* jumped on one of the newest idiot talking-point from his favorite electric teevee stars—namely, that rich people have walls around their houses, so why are some of them so opposed to the big, beautiful, stupid wall, anyway? And he expressed a threadbare facsimile of human empathy about the children his administration is locking up. In other words, he feels their pain. This dog remains uninterested in hunting.

My god, I have seen some history made in Oval Office speeches, many of them delivered by presidents who found themselves in some kind of peril—Kennedy on missiles in Cuba, LBJ leaving the race, Nixon leaving the presidency, Reagan trying to explain his way out of Iran-Contra. This wasn't one of those. This was a campaign speech for the president*'s re-election, and, as Lawrence O'Donnell emphasized on his MSNBC show, it also was a fundraising vehicle.

There was no history echoing through his words. There was all the gravitas of a pitch for aluminum siding. There was only the same grubby venality that has marked his entire public career. He did everything but shill for Trump products. He should've fired himself on the spot.

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Charles P. Pierce Charles P Pierce is the author of four books, most recently Idiot America, and has been a working journalist since 1976.

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