On Tuesday, Donald Trump showed that it is not only through the spoken word or his Twitter account that he is able to raise eyebrows, when he sent an angry and frequently bizarre letter to House speaker Nancy Pelosi.

The six-page missive was remarkable for a number of reasons, not least for Trump’s claim he has been subjected to worse treatment than that endured by people accused of witchcraft in the 17th century.

Here are five highlights, or otherwise, from Trump’s dispatch.

Representative Debbie Lesko reads a copy of Trump’s letter on Capitol Hill in Washington Tuesday. Photograph: Jacquelyn Martin/AP

1) ‘More due process was afforded to those accused in the Salem Witch Trials.’

Fourteen women and five men were hanged in colonial Massachusetts the late 1690s, for supposedly engaging in witchcraft. “Spectral evidence” was admissible in the trials – evidence where a witness had a dream, or apparition, which featured the alleged witch engaged in dark deeds. Spectral evidence is yet to feature in Trump’s impeachment hearings.

2) ‘You [Nancy Pelosi] are offending Americans of faith by continually saying: “I pray for the president,” when you know this statement is not true, unless it is meant in a negative sense. It is a terrible thing you are doing, but you will have to live with it, not I!’

Nancy Pelosi has repeatedly said she prays for Donald Trump. In October, the House speaker said she was praying for his “health”, after Trump had what she described as a “meltdown” during a meeting with Democratic leaders. It’s not the first time she has claimed to be appealing to a higher power on Trump’s behalf. It seems Trump doesn’t like it. Or believe it.

3) ‘There are not many people who could have taken the punishment inflicted during this period of time, and yet done so much for the success of America and its citizens.’

Trump’s claims that he alone could withstand such rough treatment from his opponents rather fall down here – located as they are in a six-page ode to self-pity.

4) ‘You view democracy as your enemy!’

This exclamation comes midway through the letter, after Trump claims the Democrats have developed “Trump Derangement Syndrome”. Trump is not confident of the odds Democrats will recover from the malady: “You will never get over it!” he writes.

5) ‘I write this letter to you for the purpose of history and to put my thoughts on a permanent and indelible record. 100 years from now, when people look back at this affair, I want them to understand it, and learn from it, so that it can never happen to another president again.’

There’s a slightly self-satisfied air to the final paragraph of the letter, as if Trump feels he has delivered a piece of soaring oratory which will be pored over by scholars in years to come. At least here, in a sense, Trump is correct. People are unlikely to forget “this affair” – his presidency – for a long, long time and historians of the future will certainly examine this letter: just perhaps not in the way Trump would want them to.