This morning, 63 days after being elected President of the United States, Donald Trump held his first press conference as president-elect. It's hard to glean specifics from an event that began with the man issuing a lengthy denial of a report that he is a sex show-soliciting Russian puppet, but for the most part, it was a giant nothingburger. He regurgitated a few talking points about factory jobs, a wall, the crooked media, and his old nemesis Hillary Clinton; trotted out a lawyer to tediously explain how her tortured readings of constitutional law mean that Trump can't possibly divest from his business conflicts; and abruptly concluded by jokingly telling his sons that "they're fired" if they screw up his organization's assets. It was the same vapid, substance-free combination of bluster, non sequitur, and good old-fashioned bullshit that we've come to expect, this time trussed up as a press conference.

More than anything, this miniature circus reaffirmed that the next President of the United States knows how to do only one thing (other than tweet): campaign. Donald Trump is perfectly comfortable and remarkably adept at filling arenas, honing his tough-guy act, pandering for applause lines, attacking his enemies both real and imaginary, and making off-the-cuff promises that he has no intention of keeping. But when he has to answer specific questions, or perhaps even follow-up questions—the horror!—Trump turns into a nervous, sweaty ninth-grader gamely trying to fake his way through a class presentation on a book he didn't read.

Every one of his answers seemed designed to get the experience over with as quickly as possible. When pressed on the subject of the wall, he indignantly proclaimed his "love" and "respect" for the people of Mexico, apparently forgetting the xenophobic diatribe that he used to launch his campaign eighteen months ago. He dismissed concerns about Russian hacking by assuring the assembled reporters that Putin would "respect" the United States under the Trump administration. And in a truly breathtaking moment, he directly contradicted the position of his party's congressional leaders on repealing the Affordable Care Act—their signature issue for the 115th Congress—pledging that he would "simultaneously" repeal and replace the law, even though Paul Ryan and friends, realizing that doing so would be a political and electoral disaster for the Republican Party, have loudly and firmly promised to do no such thing. Today was Trump's first test at actually being president, and spent the entire time acting like he'd rather be on the moon.

Identifying which Real News Story the president-elect's antics are designed to distract us from has become an exhausting and occasionally pointless exercise, like trying to play a shell game with a hundred different shells and no ball under any of them. But while Trump prepared one of his most impressive word salads yet, over on Capitol Hill, an unrepentant ideologue with a history of casual racism is on the verge of becoming Attorney General, and an energy company CEO with no diplomatic experience could soon head the State Department. Trump's stunt succeeded in taking some pressure off of them, but failed miserably at showing that he has any interest in serving as President of the United States.