Here’s a quick heat check: on Tuesday, President Trump gave an interview to the Associated Press where he pushed back at the growing global outrage over Saudi Arabia’s apparent assassination of journalist Jamal Khashoggi at its consulate in Istanbul. As the savage details of the killing begin to pile up, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s regime has looked less and less like the marauding modernizer that Thomas Friedman believed him to be when the 33-year-old assumed power just over a year ago. What will the whole sordid affair mean for U.S. policy? Enter the presidential bowling ball to tell us.

On Tuesday, during his interview with the AP, Trump managed to suck out any space and time still remaining in the universe, replacing it with McNugget-flavored spittle. Pushing the U.S. ever closer to state of linguistic and moral incoherence, Trump defended the murder of a critic of Riyadh, by comparing the criticism being launched at the Crown Prince for potentially orchestrating the hit as a rush to judgement akin to… wait for it… the withering criticism of Brett Kavanaugh for alleged sexual misconduct, including assault, during his high school and college days.

“I think we have to find out what happened first,” Trump said. “Here we go again with, you know, you’re guilty until proven innocent. I don’t like that. We just went through that with Justice Kavanaugh and he was innocent all the way as far as I’m concerned.”

Here we go again, he said. Here we go again.