In the hot-mic tape of Trump talking about women with Billy Bush, it is the desperate need for validation, as much as the mere ugliness, that impresses. Photograph by the Washington Post via Getty

A famous scene in the great Marx Brothers’ surrealist farce “Duck Soup” has Groucho, as Rufus T. Firefly, the prime minister of Freedonia, in negotiation with Trentino, the stuffy prime minister of the neighboring country of Sylvania. Trentino calls Groucho a series of insults—“Worm!” “Swine!”—none of them the least penetrating Groucho’s equanimity—until, at last, he lands on “Upstart!” That’s intolerable to Freedonian pride. “This means war!” Groucho declares, and it does.

“Upstart!” suddenly sending Freedonia off to war was the most mysterious event of its kind until, in the midst of our own surrealist farce of a campaign, the hot-mic tape displaying Donald Trump as a brutal, vile, woman-despising, sexually predatory vulgarian suddenly has set the elders of the Republican Party off to war with him. Upstart, indeed! Why should this previously hidden mean-minded monologue mean more than all the other countless unhidden ones, which have already shown Trump to be a brutal, vile vulgarian? Mexican “rapists,” “she gained a massive amount of weight,” “blood coming out of her wherever”—all of these and more Paul Ryan and the rest passed by untroubled, until “grab them by the pussy” became their “upstart!”

Many theories flutter around attempting to explain this non sequitur, most of them suitably Marxian and absurdist. The two best seem to be that recorded evidence is somehow always more powerful than reported or second-hand evidence, however reliable the reported evidence may obviously be. It was, in effect, hot mics that brought down Nixon, as they have brought down many a mafia don—even if in all those cases, too, the recording merely confirmed what any sane person knew already. Indeed, the Trump tape puts one in mind of nothing so much as that other recent hot-mic episode, Robert Durst’s unforgettable apparent confession to murder in “The Jinx.” In both cases, evil behavior that could already be known from all the evidence was somehow uniquely confirmed from the bad guy’s own mouth. “Grab them by the pussy!” is the “Killed them all, of course!” of 2016.

The other reasonable theory, sponsored by Princeton’s Sam Wang, is that, when a camel’s back has already been broken by the cumulative weight of countless straws, we wrongly credit the last straw in the pile with breaking it. Trump had been imploding for weeks, Wang argues, the polls showed this, and the Republican elders, as craven in abandonment as they previously were in surrender, were just waiting for an excuse to get off the doomed train.

Doubtless, both theories have some truth in them. But let us add, before the moment vanishes, that, along with the compulsive Trump creepiness, there was also, perhaps significantly, something pathetic and therefore newly vulnerable about the taped Trump. This was not a dominant American Mussolini asserting himself contemptuously on stage. It was, well, a loser, struggling to impress a very insignificant new acquaintance with pitiful boasts about his masculinity. What runs through the tape is, along with his one-size-fits-all brutality, Trump’s deep insecurity and desperate need for approval from other men. Even the bad language doesn’t seem like that of a native speaker of English, certainly not what the nasty sex predator he wants to portray himself as being would use. “I moved on her like a bitch!” Is that even an idiom? He is not boasting so much as begging, looking for Billy Bush’s confirmation of his sexuality and his stardom, as crazy narcissists will. The same thing is true of the newly discovered tapes of his conversations with Howard Stern. He engages in matchlessly creepy celebration of his own daughter as an object of sexual interest, yes, but it’s obvious that he is doing it above all to be admired and accepted by Stern. He is willing to throw his daughter under the bus and onto a mattress, so to speak, in exchange for a moment more of the King of All Media’s approval. It is the desperate need for validation and success, as much as the mere ugliness, that impresses.

Pathological narcissists who have had their narcissism punctured are, however, very dangerous people. Trump’s threat to turn tonight’s debate into an assault on Hillary Clinton’s character (the pathological narcissist is always sure that it is other people who have the illness, blaming the pool of water for any imperfection found in his face) may make the evening even uglier than the last one, though it is hard to see how being snarled and spat at for ninety minutes can do Clinton harm, if she keeps her cool. Already, surely, Trump must be getting some sense from his wised-up children that, if he goes that way, he will crater the Trump companies as badly as he has cratered his campaign, leaving them with nothing to inherit. The issue may be whether Trump is most driven to unleash his demons or to preserve his brand. Unfortunately for him, it may be too late even for self-preservation. When the prime minister of Sylvania tries to plead his way out of the Upstart War, Groucho announces, “It's too late. I've already paid a month's rent on the battlefield.” Trump has already paid more than a month’s rent on his, and real-estate tycoon that he is, or pretends to be, he may not want to leave the rent money wasted.