I don't want to alarm anyone, but the president* may well have set up camp outside his mind.

On Wednesday, he called in the press to pitch his big, beautiful, stupid wall and, on the spot, came up with another cosmically fanciful reason why we need it. Gaze in awe, fellow citizens.

They're driving in and they're not coming through checkpoints, because you can't have three or four people in the back with tape over your mouths and your hands tied and drive past someone who is checking out your van...The fact is if we don't have barriers, walls, call them what you will, very strong barriers where people can not any longer drive right across. They have unbelievable vehicles. They make a lot of money. They have the best vehicles you can buy. They have stronger, bigger and faster vehicles than our police have and that ICE have and that Border Patrol have. [Ed. Note: And they still have to tie people up, four to a backseat? They really got snookered by some salesman, boy.] They're pretty good at that. They have areas they go to. It's like a highway.

I think the new Mad Max reboot is going to flop, myself.

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Earlier in the day, probably because California has refused to rake its forests properly, as he suggested, he announced that he might be cutting off FEMA aid to those areas hit hardest by last year's wildfires. From the Washington Post:

Trump tweeted Wednesday morning that “billions of dollars” are sent to California to help with its wildfire recovery efforts and claimed, without evidence, that the state would not need the funds if forests were properly managed. “Unless they get their act together, which is unlikely, I have ordered FEMA to send no more money,” Trump stated. “It is a disgraceful situation in lives & money!”

It is unclear, based on the tweet’s wording, if Trump already directed the Federal Emergency Management Agency to withhold funds or if he would be doing so. FEMA representatives did not immediately respond to a request for comment Wednesday morning. An email sent to them generated this automated reply: “Due to the federal funding hiatus, we are not able to respond to general press queries.”

As Lawrence O'Donnell said on the electric Twitter machine Wednesday morning, this is a particularly grotesque bit of hamhanded extortion because California sends more money to Washington in taxes than any other state, and, therefore, the president* is essentially refusing to send some of California's own money back so that the state can rebuild itself. Moreover, 95 percent of the land that burned belongs to...wait for it...the federal government. And, finally, FEMA can't do a damn thing one way or another, because its functions have been banjaxed by the government shutdown on which the president* insisted upon so he can have his big, beautiful stupid wall in order to stop the Firecracker 500 down there in Nogales.

And that's the news from Camp Runamuck for Wednesday, January 9, 2019. Stay tuned for further updates, provided everyone is sober.

Update (4:46 p.m.): And, by all accounts, the day ended with a major presidential* tantrum. From the NYT:

President Trump slammed his hand on a table and stormed out of a White House meeting with congressional leaders on Wednesday after Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California said she would not fund a wall along the southern border, dramatically escalating the confrontation over the government shutdown. Stunned Democrats emerged from the White House meeting declaring that Mr. Trump had thrown a “temper tantrum.” The president’s allies accused Democrats of refusing to negotiate. Then he tweeted that the meeting was “a total waste of time.”

The Art of the Deal, in spaghetti thrown against the kindergarten wall.

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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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