Trump grew most animated as he listed his grievances and described all the forces he believed are arrayed against him and his presidency.

He repeated words like “hoax,” “scam” and “fraud” as casually as another president might say NATO or “shared values.”

“So the political storm, I’ve lived with it from the day I got elected,” he said. “I’m used to it. For me, it’s like putting on a suit in the morning.”

He complained that after special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s extensive probe into Russian election meddling and potential obstruction of justice by the White House, he got only “three days of peace” before the threat of impeachment cast a cloud over the second half of his term.

“I’ve lived with this cloud now for almost three years,” he said.

The president lamented that former House speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) “would never give anybody a subpoena,” hesitating when Trump’s defenders wanted to use congressional powers to investigate Democrats and the FBI. By contrast, he said, Pelosi was a subpoena-approving machine.

Trump also embraced a sense of victimhood-by-proxy for his aides, some of whom were implicated in Mueller’s probe.

“They came down to Washington to do a great job,” he said of his aides, claiming that the investigations had “destroyed” them. “They left Washington dark.”

But Trump also presented himself as the battle-scarred victor who was uniquely capable of fighting back against his perceived enemies and on behalf of his supporters.

In describing how he has survived the “greatest hoax” in history and a “fraudulent crime on the American people,” he cited conservative media figures.

“People have said to me, how does he handle it?” Trump said. “Rush Limbaugh said, ‘I don’t know of any man in America that could handle it.’ Sean Hannity said the same thing.”