How about the content of the tweets? The first appears to be a reference to unnamed Trump aides handwringing to the press about his lack of preparation for the first debate. (As Maggie Haberman wryly noted, Trump would know: He was once notorious for calling reporters and speaking to them about himself while using a pseudonym.)

The fact that he was unready to take on Hillary Clinton is manifest to practically every observer except Trump, his adviser Rudy “Why would we change if we won the debate?” Giuliani, and spokesman Jason Miller, who somehow managed to mostly keep a straight face while insisting to Chuck Todd on Thursday that web surveys were more reliable than scientific polls.

Then there’s the Machado tweets. Four days after Trump debate Clinton, he is still consumed by his anger at a woman who was Miss Universe in the 1990s. Or, to put that in demographic terms, Trump is still insulting a Latina woman and calling attention to the fact that he called her fat with just a month left until an election, when he trails Clinton badly among Latinas and women. And he’s doing so at the cost of attacking his opponent, at a time when she is seeing a rebound in the polls.

Let’s remember how we got here: During Monday’s debate, Trump questioned Clinton’s stamina. Clinton responded by springing a trap, bringing up Alicia Machado and recalling how Trump called her “Miss Piggy” and “Miss Housekeeping.” Trump said that it was unfair for Clinton to attack him. The next day, on Fox and Friends, he eagerly confirmed that he’d criticized Machado for her weight gain, walking farther into Clinton’s trap. Now he’s still going.

Machado is not without her own checkered past. She was accused of being complicit in an attempted murder in Venezuela, though she was never arrested or charged. She did not, it appears, act in any porn, though she did pose topless for Playboy and was filmed doing … something under sheets while on a Big Brother-style reality-TV show. The clip is more embarrassing than explicit.

Yet Trump’s method of broaching that is baffling. There’s the bizarre spectacle of a presidential candidate from the party of the religious right telling anyone who will listen to “check out [a] sex tape.” (Trump has a special attachment to the word “disgusting,” which he uses to describe a breast-feeding attorney and a bathroom break Clinton took during a Democratic debate.)

In a campaign of unprecedented moments, this is yet another. Machado’s sex life has nothing to do with the issue at hand, which is Trump’s comments about her weight and ethnicity, but by continuing to talk about her, he offers fresh reminders about what he said about her.

It also exposes some hypocrisy: Who is Trump to criticize anyone for salaciousness? This is the man who once said, “You know, it doesn’t really matter what [the media] write as long as you’ve got a young and beautiful piece of ass,” and who has bragged about his sexual exploits (perhaps literally) ad nauseam. Trump is only reminding everyone of his double-standard on sex for men and women, which is plays into Clinton’s hands.