What should be a sea change in the national conversation regarding Trump’s inability to serve was, yet again, far too little too late. For anyone watching these past six months in office, or the campaign that preceded it, the tire fire of anti-intellectual narcissism that was Trump’s Phoenix speech was about as surprising as guac costing extra.

It would seem there are no alarms left to ring, and yet, the march of normalization continues. The old guard of media and government is scrambling to stop this train wreck — but the reality is such that the president’s most egregious behavior fails to disqualify him from being taken seriously. Still, a true paradigm shift remains a distant hope, in part because of a desperate willingness to pat Trump on the back for any action that doesn’t cause an immediate crisis.

Indeed, the normalization that began with Trump’s campaign was out in full force just the day before Phoenix, when The Washington Post's White House Bureau Chief Philip Rucker apparently miraculously mistook Trump’s ability to use a teleprompter as a presidential turning point. “Tonight is a new President Trump,” he tweeted of the Monday night speech on Afghanistan. “Acknowledging a flip-flop and talking about gravity of office, history & substance.”

In reality, Trump outlined an ambiguous nonplan that said there would be no “blank check” for the 16-year, massively expensive war — which is, by the way, opposed by the majority of Americans — before refusing to provide the number of troops he planned to send, in what is the the very definition of a blank check. But I see how Rucker may have been thrown off by the president’s ability to read.

The urge to normalize Trump’s behavior comes from a desperation for respectability. Outwardly, nonpartisan journalists and government figures held their tongues under the guise of being fair and balanced and the misguided insistence that their professionalism relies on honoring “both sides.” The attempt to even the playing field is excruciatingly obvious in hindsight, with the “but her emails” comparison most certainly going down in history as the most destructive false equivalency of our time. How are we still being duped?

Presented with minimal displays of efficacy, prominent broadcasters devolve into breathless praise. After Trump ordered a missile strike in Syria, Fareed Zakaria showered him with claims of new legitimacy. Brian Williams called the move “beautiful.” And then, of course, there was that time CNN commentator Van Jones fell for Teleprompter Trump. Following Trump’s first address to Congress in March, the host delivered his now-notorious declaration: “He became president of the United States in that moment, period.”

Since long before Trump was elected, undue praise for him has been likened to being “graded on a curve,” but that’s not exactly what’s happening with the widespread hesitance to disqualify him from being taken seriously. “Grading on a curve” means adjusting evaluations to fit an objective standard, but the problem with the way the media discusses Trump is that there’s no such thing. For example, I got a 68 on a mind-numbing physics exam in college, and that turned out to be a B+ after the adjustment. What’s happening with Trump is like him throwing the test in the garbage, and then being named valedictorian.