There are terrible weeks—frankly, practically all of them since last January 20. And there are sort-of-okay-in-a-bitter-way weeks—like the one during which it was suggested former national security adviser and shady character Michael Flynn began cooperating with the Mueller probe. And then—so rare in this day and age—there are genuinely wonderful weeks—like the one that just passed! The miraculous triumph of Doug Jones in Alabama gave renewed hope that other impossible dreams could come true in the midterms—if the Democrats can win in Alabama, why not a midterm sweep in Kansas, or Nebraska, or Georgia?

Of course, this one spectacular achievement was a singular shining light in an otherwise all-too-familiar thicket of lies. The president reacted to the loss of his preferred candidate, Roy Moore (who has supported removing amendments from the constitution and has been accused of improper behavior with young girls), by arguing in a tweet on Wednesday morning that “Roy worked hard but the deck was stacked against him!” (What deck? The deck full of women with harrowing tales to tell? The deck of people who want to defend the rights of women and the LGBT community, and who don’t look back fondly on slavery?)

But then again, Trump has been acting so unhinged lately that even USA Today, which you probably last saw when they hung it on your door at a Marriott, blew a gasket. Reacting to his tweet on Tuesday implying that Senator Gillibrand offered to trade sex for campaign donations, the outraged editorial board of this typically bland journal offered these ferocious words: “A president who would all but call Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand a whore is not fit to clean the toilets in the Barack Obama Presidential Library or to shine the shoes of George W. Bush.”

But no shoes or toilet await him, at least not yet—instead, the Trump family and their Gilded Age cohort are getting a great big bag of tax breaks for Christmas. It is almost certain that this heinous legislation will become law before the end of the year, since even those Republicans who dared to offer a squeak of protest—these included “Little Marco,” as Trump used to call Senator Rubio—have by now fallen into line.