Next there is the legal level. By his own admission, Trump’s beef with Sessions centers on the attorney general’s recusal from the Russia investigation, which from Trump’s perspective led to the appointment of a special counsel he now obviously yearns to fire.

This blame-Sessions perspective is warped, since it was Trump’s decision to fire James Comey (an earlier monumental folly) that was actually decisive in putting Robert Mueller on the case. But regardless of whether he has his facts straight, Trump’s logic is a straightforward admission that he wants to eject his attorney general because Sessions has not adequately protected him from legal scrutiny — an argument that at once reveals Trump’s usual contempt for laws and norms and also suggests (not for the first time) that he has something so substantial to hide that only omertà-style loyalty will do.

Which, of course — now we’ve reached the peak of the tower of folly — he probably will not get if Sessions goes, because no hatchet man will win easy confirmation, and until Sessions is replaced the acting attorney general will be Rod Rosenstein, the man who appointed Robert Mueller as special counsel in the first place!

So it’s basically madness all the way to the top: bad policy, bad strategy, bad politics, bad legal maneuvering, bad optics, a self-defeating venture carried out via deranged-as-usual tweets and public insults.

And if it were any other president behaving like this — well, rather than repeat arguments I’ve made before, I’ll quote Bloomberg View’s Megan McArdle, writing a few months ago in response to my admittedly extreme suggestion that Trump’s behavior might justify removal under the 25th Amendment:

Imagine, if you will, that George W. Bush had started acting like Donald Trump partway into his second term …. Is there any question that people would be talking about invoking the 25th Amendment to remove him? Not for political reasons, but because it would be obvious that some tragic mental impairment had befallen the commander in chief. Adults of mature years know not to engage in histrionic self-pity in public, not necessarily because they avoid self-pity, but because outside of high school parties, this is a singularly ineffective way to make people like and support you. Competent leaders do not preside over staff who are leaking what is essentially one long and anguished primal scream to any reporter they can get to hold still. Seasoned professionals do not, suddenly and for no apparent reason, say things in public that make them better targets for legal investigations … And so the only possible explanation for such a quick succession of stunning lapses in judgment would be a severe stroke, an aggressive brain tumor or some other neurological disaster that had rendered him unfit to continue in office, at least until it could be treated. I don’t even think this would be controversial, even among his supporters. “Poor fellow,” they’d murmur, “the strain of the office has destroyed his health. He has given more than his life for his country.” Time to let him rest and heal while someone else shoulders his Sisyphean burdens.

Trump hasn’t had a stroke or suffered a neurological disaster, and his behavior in the White House is no different from the behavior he manifested consistently while winning enough votes to take the presidency.

But he is nonetheless clearly impaired, gravely deficient somewhere at the intersection of reason and judgment and conscience and self-control. Pointing this out is wearying and repetitive, but still it must be pointed out.

You can be as loyal as Jeff Sessions and still suffer the consequences of that plain and inescapable truth: This president should not be the president, and the sooner he is not, the better.