Barack Obama working in what is either the Oval Office or a stage as elaborately faked as his birth certificate. Photo: Handout/Getty Images

Donald Trump’s jealous obsession with his predecessor is well known, but a Washington Post report indicates the psychosis is even worse than you think. (The first rule of Trump: It is always worse than you think.) Apparently, the ways Trump attempts to demonstrate his superiority over Barack Obama extend to allegedly greater use of the Oval Office. Every tour stop would include an emphasis on this point.

“Obama never used the Oval, but Trump is different,” the president would say, referring to himself in the third person as he often does, according to people who have witnessed the tours:

As his guests marveled at the space, Trump would press them, asking if Obama had ever shown them the West Wing’s inner sanctum.

When he was invariably told no, Trump appeared to beam with pride.

This is obviously a bizarre attack, for several reasons:

1. Does it really matter which room a president works in?

2. Obama did in fact use the Oval Office. I conducted an interview with him. There are many photos documenting his use of the room.

3. Trump is the laziest man in the modern history of the presidency. He watches television until 11 every morning. His working day often ends by 4:30 p.m.

Like many of his attacks on Obama — for instance, the favorite Trump campaign riff about Obama allegedly playing too much golf — there is an irrational element of self-loathing at work. It is almost as if Trump is so obsessed with defiling Obama that he might express his resentment in the form of some kind of perverted and abnormal behavior.