One of my favorite events in American history, and one to which I was hipped by historian Heather Cox Richardson only in the past year, is the Swing Around the Circle. It happened in 1866. Andrew Johnson, by the whim of the trickster gods and the unanimous vote of the goblins in the brain of John Wilkes Booth, was President of the United States, and he was busying himself with making sure that white supremacy was re-established in those states that most recently had gone to war to defend it. Johnson decided, against almost all presidential precedent, to take his case to the people in advance of the midterm elections of that year. He would go West—that, in those days, being places like Ohio and Missouri. It did not go well.

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On September 3, he arrived in Cleveland. His crowd was filled with hecklers. To a loud suggestion that Jefferson Davis be hanged, Johnson replied, “Why not hang Thad Stevens and Wendell Philips?”—two prominent supporters of rigorous Reconstruction. Johnson appeared to be seriously hammered at this point and nearly fell off the platform. In St. Louis, he went completely bananas, accusing so-called “radical Republicans” of fomenting the recent white-supremacist coup d’etat in New Orleans and ending by driving the nails into his own palms.

He declared himself “traduced and abused.” He’d found himself accused of being a traitor, said Johnson, of being Judas Iscariot.

“There was a Judas once,” he ranted, “one of the twelve apostles. Oh, yes, and these apostles had a Christ. The twelve apostles had a Christ and he couldn’t have had a Judas unless he had twelve apostles. (Ed. Note: the basic incoherence of that sentence leads one to believe that Johnson was sockless during this speech, too.) If I have played the Judas, who has been my Christ that I have played Judas with? Was it Thad Stevens? Was it Wendell Philips? Was it Charles Sumner? Are these the men that set up and compare themselves with the Saviour of men, and everybody that differs with them in opinion, and tries to stay their diabolical and nefarious policy, is to be denounced as Judas?”

The official transcript says that this passage was followed by, “Hurray for Andy, and cheers.” However, as author Garrett Epps points out in Democracy Reborn, his excellent book about the fight to pass the Reconstruction amendments to the Constitution, the New York Times account of the speech was topped by one of those headlines that any politician dreads: Johnson Denies He Is Judas Iscariot. As a later President Johnson once put it, “Make the sonuvabitch deny it!”

(The entire, lengthy, and lunatic text of the St. Louis speech can be found in the Library of America's brilliant new compilation of documents, et cetera, from Reconstruction. It takes up 12 full pages and, at the end of it, Johnson comes out for congressional term limits. No kidding.)

"Hurray for Andy, and cheers.”

Anyway, it appears that the president* is engaging in his own Swing Around the Circle, a more limited one geographically than the one Johnson took, although there is one of his extended exercises in onanism planned for tonight in Duluth. In recent days, as the backlash has built against the crime spree against humanity that his administration has unleashed at our southern border, he’s gone so manic and so utterly truthless that Ashley Parker of The Washington Post felt moved to make it plain.

President Trump — a man already known for trafficking in mistruths and even outright lies — has been outdoing even himself with falsehoods in recent days, repeating and amplifying bogus claims on several of the most pressing controversies facing his presidency. Since Saturday, Trump has tweeted false or misleading information at least seven times on the topic of immigration and at least six times on a Justice Department inspector general report into the FBI’s handling of its investigation into Hillary Clinton’s private email server. That’s more than a dozen obfuscations on just two central topics — a figure that does not include falsehoods on other issues, whether in tweets or public remarks.

On Wednesday, he gave an unhinged diatribe to a largely friendly audience at the National Federation of Independent Businesses at the end of which he hugged a flag.

Child smugglers exploit the loopholes, and they gain illegal entry into the United States, putting countless children in danger on the perilous trek to the United States. They come up through Mexico. Mexico does nothing for us. You hear it here: They do nothing for us. They could stop it. They have very, very strong laws. Try staying in Mexico for a couple of days. See how long that lasts. Okay? (Laughter and applause.)

If I stayed a couple of days in Mexico, my estimate is that my stay would last… Engages Cray-1 computer… approximately 48 hours. Laughter and applause? Hurrah for Andy!

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Later that night, he had a closed-door—and, perhaps, padded wall—meeting with congressional Republicans at which he went out of his way to take a cheap shot at Mark Sanford, the South Carolina congressman who lost a primary after the president* tweeted at him. From CNBC:

Though immigration was top of mind for lawmakers, Trump reportedly strayed from the topic early and often during his remarks to Republicans. Curbelo noted that Trump's comments "did wander a bit." Trump made the room fall silent when he mockingly said he wanted to "congratulate" Sanford on his primary race, according to Politico. The South Carolina Republican, an occasional Trump critic, lost a primary this month to a challenger who criticized him for not doing enough to help the president. The president called Sanford "nasty," the news outlet reported. The representative was not in the room.

Gutsy is as gutsy does. The president* is gleefully indulging in inhumane practices that would shame a cockroach.. His idea of a “compromise” is a bill that keeps families together in detention camps and funds his stupid boondoggle of a wall. He’s going out of his way to snipe at political opponents who already are dead. He is a fool and a coward, and he’s sounding like he’s half-mad. That Duluth rally should be a sight to see. Hurrah for Andy!

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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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