In A Short History of Decay, the book that cemented his reputation as one of the 20th century’s greatest thinkers, the dour Romanian philosopher Emil Cioran wrote, “I have tried to protect myself against men, to react against their madness to discern its source; I have listened and I have seen—and I have been afraid of acting for the same motives or for any motive whatever, of believing in the same ghosts or in any other ghost, of letting myself be engulfed by the same intoxications or by some other ... afraid, in short, of raving in common and of expiring in a horde of ecstasies.” President Donald Trump, we know after Thursday’s press conference, has no such fear.

In Trump’s first two weeks, the president and his inner circle projected an image of frenzied activity—mostly in the form of executive orders—as a self-conscious attempt to put behind the chaos that had defined the transition. It was as if, with every executive order, Trump was trying to tell the nation that this was all for a purpose, that he was not King Lear on the heath, that he was riding the crest of a powerful, cleansing wave. But in Trump’s third week, this illusion fell apart. The institutions that Trump had spent a year or more decrying—the judiciary and the intelligence community, in particular—struck back. The week ended with his administration on the verge of a nervous breakdown.

In Trump’s fourth week, the wheels—which, to be fair, were never really on in the first place, and also on fire—came off. Wave after wave of reports detailing internal dysfunction and a bewildered president continued to crash against the administration. Then the White House faced its first major scandal: the resignation of Michael Flynn. That this scandal blew up a mere 24 days into the Trump administration, and was far more damaging than anything that happened in the Obama years, is everything you need to know about Trump’s disastrous presidency.



But Trump’s fourth week started rather quietly. On Friday morning, he demonstrated what is already well-known, that he has zero reading comprehension skills. (If you have conclusive proof that Trump has read a book, please email me.) He attacked the failing New York Times by tweeting: “The failing @nytimes does major FAKE NEWS China story saying “Mr.Xi has not spoken to Mr. Trump since Nov.14.” We spoke at length yesterday!” The Times article Trump was referring to was written before the conversation with Xi and was perfectly accurate. Trump then spent most of the afternoon violently shaking Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s hand:

Pres. Trump and Japanese PM Abe meet, shake hands in the Oval Office https://t.co/rG1oCqyhkf pic.twitter.com/njJ13Qi3s1 — CBS News (@CBSNews) February 10, 2017

Despite the storm clouds gathering over Mike Flynn, Saturday was perhaps the quietest day of Trump’s presidency. He took to Twitter to say that The Wall (which he is now referring to as the “great Wall,” presumably as part of a tie-in campaign for the Matt Damon movie) would cost less than $21 billion because he would negotiate the price down. He went golfing with Shinzo Abe and presumably cheated. It wasn’t until evening that Trump fulfilled his unspoken goal of making at least one fuck-up of world-historical proportion every day. After being informed that North Korea had tested a ballistic missile, Trump and his advisers held a security briefing in full view of the guests at Mar-a-Lago. As Trump staffers lit classified briefing with camera phones, the guests looked on with glee and posted on Facebook about how incredible it was to watch an event of this magnitude unfold before their eyes. For the first time in Mar-a-Lago’s history, the club’s members got their money’s worth.