There’s one moment from that trip I’ll never forget. We were standing under a canopy near the trucking port—er, “the border”—for a press conference with Trump. As the TV cameramen jockeyed for position, Trump sauntered to the microphones, squinting out at us from under a blinding white MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN hat (the hat’s debut).

“Thank you very much for being here,” he began. “Mexico is booming, absolutely booming.” Mexico? The reporters shot each other disbelieving looks. He praised the Laredo mayor and city manager, then added, “But a lot of what’s happening here is because of the fact that Mexico is doing so well. Just, uh, doing beyond what anybody ever thought.” The candidate whose raison d’être to that point was stopping illegal immigration from Mexico had now decided, with the eyes of the world on him, to heap praise on… Mexico. “And I don’t know if that’s good for the United States, but it’s good for Mexico. Anybody have any questions?”

The whole trip lasted just four hours, surreal from start to end. I wrote my story as soon as I got back to Washington and, a few days later, went on CNN to affirm its final paragraph: I was done writing about Trump. The feigned visit to the border, the inexplicable bullishness on Mexico, the pretense of imminent danger, the word salad—I could not continue to give that side-show serious attention. While I was—and remain—fascinated by Trump’s support among voters of all ages, I thought his candidacy would implode once the primaries began, if not sooner.

And look what’s happened.

I held to my anti-Trump vow for a good nine months, until it was painfully clear how wrong I had been. Even then, I’ve only written about the man twice. But like many of us, I’ve watched Trump’s speeches and read his tweets, and in my head, I go back to Laredo and the questions it left me with, questions that linger all these months later. What is this spectacle I’m witnessing? (It’s not a presidential campaign, not in the way I understood a campaign to be.) What’s the meaning of the Trump phenomenon?

Trump has been the subject of millions of stories, hundreds of thousands of radio and TV segments, endless tweets and Facebook screeds. There are days when it feels like network news exists for the sole purpose of broadcasting Trump’s apricot mug. Yet I can’t say I feel any closer to grasping the fundamental nature of this historically bizarre election year, its tectonic movements at work throughout the nation. What am I—what are Americans—supposed to learn from Trump’s rise?

I’ve come up with a theory: Trump’s candidacy has acted like a barium test on our body politic, revealing the flaws, distortions, and breakdowns that riddle the system. He has unwittingly shone a light on what has gone wrong in American politics: how it is discussed, how it is funded, and how it is covered. And he has done it—oblivious to the nth degree—in a way that no other candidate could (though I’ll mention Bernie Sanders) and in a manner that is apparent to any voter who has paid the slightest bit of attention to politics this year. In no way do I support the mendacity of so much of what Trump says and does. At the same time, much as it hurts me to say so, I believe that Trump has done the nation a service.