“‘Well, sir, you’re actually right. We have no deficit, but that doesn’t include energy and timber. . . . And when you do, we lose $17 billion a year.’ It’s incredible.”

In fact, according to the Office of the United States Trade Representative, Trump was not right: the U.S. has a trade surplus with Canada. Yet for reasons unknown, he reiterated his point Thursday morning:

Elsewhere during the 30-minute speech, Trump launched into his usual tirade about America’s allies taking us for a ride, telling the donors assembled that on his watch, the U.S. won’t get ripped off anymore. He described the North American Free Trade Agreement as a disaster, calling Mexico “spoiled,” and claiming that those slippery bastards in Canada had outsmarted us for the last time. He trashed the World Trade Organization for supposedly letting other countries take advantage of the U.S. on trade. At one point, he seemingly threatened to pull U.S. troops out of South Korea if Seoul, one of our allies, doesn’t give him what he wants on trade. (“We have a very big trade deficit with them, and we protect them,” he said. “We lose money on trade, and we lose money on the military. We have right now 32,000 soldiers on the border between North and South Korea. Let’s see what happens.”) At another point, he told a story about a test he claimed Japan performs on its cars, but which no one else has ever heard of. “It’s the bowling ball test,” he said. “They take a bowling ball from 20 feet up in the air and drop it on the hood of the car. If the hood dents, the car doesn’t qualify. It’s horrible.”

All in all, the speech represented a horrific 30-minute look inside the mind of Donald Trump, and a great preview for what allies attempting to negotiate exemptions from the steel and aluminum tariffs are up against: a pathological liar who invents stories that make him sound less like the president of the United States and more like a deranged used car salesman. Which, in fact, is kind of an insult to deranged used car salesmen.