Based just on the parts I’d heard, I did a multi-part Twitter-exegesis last night, trying to explain why Trump’s hour-plus, nearly 9,000-word resentful rant stood alone in the history of presidential rhetoric. A Twitter user named Brent Schlottman graciously converted that into one Storify installment, which you can see here and which began:

1) I have heard presidential speeches from JFK onward. Some good, some bad. Some memorable, some boring. Some too long, some elegantly short — James Fallows (@JamesFallows) August 23, 2017

The speech also included this surreal passage, from a president whose tally of significant bills passed stands at zero:

But I enjoy it [the job], because we've made so much—I don't believe that any president—I don't believe that any president has accomplished as much as this president in the first six or seven months. I really don't believe it.

Just for the record: by this stage in his presidency, Franklin Roosevelt had pushed through and signed more than a dozen pieces of major New Deal legislation. By this point, Ronald Reagan had signed his big tax-cut bill. By this point, Barack Obama had signed the post-crash economic-stimulus program. By this point, Donald Trump has enacted no legislation of consequence.

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But it was only when I read the full speech today that I saw the bad parts. They were Trump’s extended denunciation of the legitimacy and motives of the press.

All presidents end up with grudges against reporters, editors, and commentators. It goes with the territory, and has from the time of George Washington onward. All presidents are tempted to let their private grudges spill out in public. Richard Nixon is most famous for having given in to the temptation, both on his own and via his “nattering nabobs of negativism” mouthpiece and vice president, Spiro Agnew.

But Trump broke new ground last night in attacking not just the missteps of reporters, or their assumptions, or their selective focus, or their process-mindedness, or any of the multiple other failings we reporters actually have. Instead he attacked their—our—loyalty, patriotism, motivation, and honesty.

“You have some very good reporters,” he allowed in his speech last night, much as he stipulated back in 2015 that not all Mexicans were rapists. (“They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists. And some, I assume, are good people.” This was, again, the way he kicked off his campaign.)

Some reporters, like some Mexicans, are good. Which leads to the but:

But for the most part, honestly, these are really, really dishonest people, and they're bad people. And I really think they don't like our country. I really believe that. And I don't believe they're going to change… The only people giving a platform to these hate groups is the media itself, and the fake news.

For the most part, these are really, really dishonest people.