If you took a gander at Donald Trump’s schedule on Thursday, you would have seen that he was slated, in theory, to attend a “roundtable discussion on tax reform” in White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia. In practice, that didn’t actually happen. Oh, the president made it to the town of 2,444 and sat on the panel, flanked by Representative Evan Jenkins and West Virginia Attorney General Patrick Morrisey. But because he doesn’t have control of the words that come out of his mouth, and because the electric cattle prod John Kelly probably wanted to use to keep him in line was out of range, the event became less about the tax legislation passed in December and more about every deranged, fact-free thought that passed through the 45th president’s brain.

From the get-go, it was clear Trump wasn’t even going to pretend to give the affair a patina of order, literally throwing his prepared talking points into the air and telling the crowd, “You know, this was going to be my remarks. It would’ve taken about two minutes, but to hell with it. That would have been a little boring, a little boring.”

With that out of the way, he launched into a rant riddled with “alternative facts” about immigrants, voter fraud, rape, and MS-13, telling the audience, among other things . . .