At what point do we say enough of this? Every day there's a new episode of Presidential Meltdown, where some event during which the world's most powerful man is meant to be conducting the affairs of state almost instantaneously plummets into some grotesque spectacle. Not every news conference and press gaggle can be co-opted into an opportunity for the president to run through his litany of grievances—petty and grand—in a functioning democratic state. But that is our current reality, another dimension of l'état, c'est Don.

The President of Finland, Sauli Niinistö, came to visit the White House this fine Wednesday, but he surely wishes he didn't. What an incredible disaster. Donald Trump, American president, used an Oval Office photo spray and a subsequent official bilateral press conference to scream and yell about Shifty Adam Schiff and The Collusion Delusion and his Beautiful, Perfect Phone Call With the President of Ukraine, Who's a Really Honorable Guy Who Said There Was No Pressure—No Pressure—and It Was a Perfect Call.

The Oval Office meet-up was decorated by Trump suggesting, sitting next to a foreign leader, that his political opponent should be tried for treason. Again. Everyone is voicing alarm, but this is pretty much normal now, particularly compared with what was to come in the formal presser.

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Fox News gets the first question and Trump immediately goes on a lengthy rant. He ultimately accuses Adam Schiff of "a criminal act" and "treason." pic.twitter.com/97fJSFs6SQ — Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) October 2, 2019

What in the hell is this man saying? He does not "always cooperate"—his administration is engaged in an unprecedented campaign of stonewalling on every front. His lawyers have made the argument, in a federal courtroom, that Congress has no oversight powers when it comes to the Executive. This is constitutionally absurd, but it's what they said. But then it was time to rant about the Hoax and the Crime Against the American People and Shifty Schiff, whom this guy accused of having a mental breakdown. But this was just a prelude.

What followed was a series of rants, some of them five minutes or more uninterrupted, in which Trump engaged in his stream-of-consciousness style in which no sentence gets finished and no syntax goes unpunished. Does he even know what he's talking about? These seem to be fragments of Fox Newsian conspiracy babble bursting out of his mouth at odd intervals, colliding in his decrepit brain like bumper cars until one can go shooting forth into the world. Oh, and of course he lied, like when he said the "transcript" of his call with the Ukrainian president was "exact" and "word-for-word"—it said on the damn readout that it wasn't verbatim.

Here's an example of one such Presidential Address, transcribed for posterity:

When he was dealing with the President of Russia, not Putin, he said, "Hey, tell Vladimir I can do a lot more after the election." You remember that? You didn't make a big deal out of that. Everybody thought, oh, isn't that cute? My talk, and my response—Lindsey Graham said, "I never knew you were that nice, I can't believe you were that nice." He said that loud and clear. It was perfect. It was perfect. Not a thing wrong with it. To impeach a president over a fraud that was committed by other people that want to win an election in 2020, which they won't, is incredible. This is the greatest hoax—now, it's gone on for a long time. We had the Mueller Collusion Delusion, OK? That went on for years. And that's finally done. No collusion, no obstruction, no nothing. It was a joke, and everyone knows it. And it was from the day one. Now, I get three days of peace, and I'm walking into the United Nations, gonna meet with the biggest leaders in the world, and I hear about the word, "impeachment." And I said, "What did I do now?" And it was about a beautiful conversation that I had. And just remember this, the Ukrainian new president, a fine man, said, "I don't know what you're talking about? There was no pressure." And he said it a number of times.

Got it. Thanks, Mr. President.

And then there was this.

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TRUMP: "There are those who think I am a very stable genius, ok?" pic.twitter.com/oUw8lTvYqx — Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) October 2, 2019

Believe it or not, even "lying" about the president is not treasonous. This is absurd, but Trump now believes he is the state. Jeff Mason was right to ask if those who oppose him are traitors by default, and Trump maintained that it's only if they lie, but Trump has also admitted that he considers any negative coverage of him to be Fake News. These things are not distinguishable in his mind because he does not believe in the concept of observable reality. The truth is whatever you can get enough people to believe. Mason's persistence, however, earned him a presidential meltdown of his very own:

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Trump berates @jeffmason1 after Mason presses him to actually answer the question he asked (he never does). The Finnish president can't help but chuckle at the shit show. pic.twitter.com/Uc6G4HvE7r — Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) October 2, 2019

The last 90 seconds or so here are surely just about the most insane minute-and-a-half ever seen in the White House. The president began here yelling about being "the SUCKER country," but that turned out to be the most coherent part. "Are you talking to me?" he asked in a bizarro De Niro, having stood back from the mic, and then he started just straight up screaming at the reporter. The president seems to believe members of the free press are obligated to follow his orders, though he couches it as a matter of civility when he is, even at the moment it's happening, the rudest person in America.

When Mason eventually did follow the enraged directions from the President of the United States to ask the President of Finland a question, Trump jumped in and answered it by yelling about his Wins.

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Trump seems to be losing it. Here he is highjacking a question intended for the Finnish president and ranting about how there weren't "wins" before he took office. pic.twitter.com/1sU0rQpSlq — Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) October 2, 2019

"We never had wins under other presidents, did you?" Trump asked, his voice dripping with seething resentment.

But then it was time for the final flourish.

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Trump attacks CNN and then abruptly ends the news conference. What an embarrassment. pic.twitter.com/RWCORiiU4f — Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) October 2, 2019

Does anyone understand what he is saying, except for the anger at the media? And that's how he ended the press conference: "If the press were straight, and honest, and forthright, and tough, we would be a far greater nation. We would be a far greater when we don't have the CNNs of the world, who are corrupt people. Thank you very much, everybody."

This is insanity. You can hear people in the room laughing as he leaves. What the fuck just happened? The United States president is rambling and incoherent on his best days, and these are not his best days. The pressure of being held accountable for what he's done, an unprecedented experience in his long and crooked life, is beginning to take its toll, and he will only grow more venal and angry. He has always been a danger to the republic and the world, but the danger is more immediate by the day. How much longer can this go on?

Jack Holmes Politics Editor Jack Holmes is the Politics Editor at Esquire, where he writes daily and edits the Politics Blog with Charles P Pierce.

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