Pop quiz: Suppose you were a president trying to get past an embarrassing story about sex with a porn star named Stormy, and you finally get one tiny win in what will undoubtedly be litigation that runs longer than “Game of Thrones.” Would you:

A) Pretend nothing is happening and confine all your public comments to that exciting new plan for across-the-board budget cuts.

B) Take your wife on a vacation in which you will actually be seen spending time together.

C) Launch a tweet vowing to “go after Horseface and her 3rd rate lawyer.”

Well, yeah, C.

“He should not have said that,” the soon-to-retire House Speaker Paul Ryan remarked during a morning news interview. The look on Ryan’s face was somber, but somewhere in the back of his eyes you could see him setting off fireworks and yelling, “I’m out of here, suckers!”

It was definitely an improvement over Senator John Kennedy of Louisiana’s defensive: “We’ve all done something like that before.” To which Kennedy unhelpfully added that he believes the president “grows anxious when he has unexpressed thoughts.”

Republicans who are trying to get elected in a year when women are the party’s big problem were obviously not thrilled when the president reminded everyone of his animal-name-calling habit. Trump lost the women’s vote in the last election, although he did win a narrow majority of white women. That was nearly two years and a lot of insults ago. We’ll have to see how many of them have noticed that he reminds them of that kid in grade school who used to call girls “Fatso” or “Bowlegs.”

And this time, he picked on a woman who’s both decidedly hard to insult and eager to promote her new memoir, which includes disparaging descriptions of the presidential private parts.

Naturally there was a Stormy response. (“In addition to his … umm … shortcomings, he has demonstrated his incompetence, hatred of women and lack of self control on Twitter AGAIN! And perhaps a penchant for bestiality. Game on, Tiny.”)