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WASHINGTON — It was a fine day for a national emergency.

There was no sign of alarm as administration officials and journalists assembled Friday in the Rose Garden under a perfect blue sky amid unseasonable warmth. Nor was there any sense of crisis conveyed by President Trump, scheduled to fly to his Mar-a-Lago resort later Friday. The much-anticipated emergency declaration was to have been at 10 a.m. At 10:18 an official said Trump would talk in two minutes. At 10:39, Trump emerged.

His topic demanded utmost solemnity: The situation on the border is so dire, such a crisis, that he must invoke emergency powers to circumvent Congress, testing the boundary between constitutional democracy and autocracy. But with the nation watching, Trump instead delivered a bizarre, 47-minute variant of his campaign speech.

He boasted about the economy, military spending and the stock markets ("we have all the records") and he applauded the Chinese president's pledge to execute people who deal fentanyl ("one of the things I'm most excited about in our trade deal"). He said Japan's prime minister had nominated him for the Nobel Peace Prize. He declared Ann Coulter "off the reservation" but praised his favorite Fox News hosts and celebrated Rush Limbaugh's endurance ("try speaking for three hours without taking calls").