Bannon later said that he didn’t recall the conversation. But he is the Trump whisperer, the one whose influence you can see with every minute left in the hourglass of this election. You have no better blueprint for Trump’s destructive campaign than those words.

Trump himself does not have a plan. He certainly doesn’t have a governing philosophy. When asked about his Supreme Court values, the only thread of the Constitution he could talk about was the Second Amendment. But he is, in the words attributed to Bannon, doing all he can to bring everything crashing down.

So, we arrive at this American gut check. Are we the country that sends election monitors out to fledgling democracies, with more than two centuries of experience to impart? Are we a nation of Rockwellian citizens at polling booths overseen by church ladies? Is there any morning in Trump’s America, or is it just the sleazy bar with a candidate desperately looking for a “10” at last call?

His debate-night threat, holding the validity of the election itself hostage, is no surprise. Trump is bereft of patriotism, and seems to hate the country he wants to lead. He’s been talking down this nation and its most cherished institutions throughout his campaign. Time and again, he would rather defend Russia than the United States.

He’s gone after free speech — that would be the right granted in the amendment just before the only one he knows — threatening his enemies in the press. That same first amendment ensures that a religious test will not be used to judge us — another thing he has thrown to the side.

When most of us look in the big mirror, we see a nation of immigrants. We see families who fled a famine, who fled war, who fled nations that offered no hope to own property or have a say in choosing a leader. Trump sees only menace, and lowlifes with foreign accents.