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At this point, thanks to the almighty curve on which we as a nation have decided to grade Donald Trump, American president, Thursday night's yell-fest in Toledo was just another Very Presidential Event. The world's most powerful man demonized his political opponents as enemies of the state because they want Congress to have some role in making less-and-less-theoretical war on Iran. He called members of the assembled press "sick," and again suggested the free press has no legitimate role in our democratic republic if it fails to support his version of reality. He again characterized Hispanic immigrants as violent criminals, MS-13 "animals" against whom any measures are presumably justified. He lied, and also threw out more evidence-free claims about imminent attacks that justified his assassination of Iran's second most important figure. He yelled, and not for the first time, that the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee has a "pencil neck." This is all considered normal.

But there was one moment that proved particularly revealing. In the course of these explosions of, uh, patriotism, El Jefe tends to drift on and off the script provided to him by his lackeyschiefly, the Santa Monica Wormtongue Stephen Miller. In the course of one such drift last night, he railed against Democrats on-script and then jumped off to, for perhaps the first time in his life, reflect on what he's doing.

Let's just get a transcript here.

You might say he's just joking around, but the blas way he recites the "stuff" he says about Democrats points to it being a kind of bit. It's a routine. Unlike Miller and unlike the people in the crowd, Donald Trump is no true believer. He's a vector for forces that long predate him, the fear and resentment of a changing world that has long blasted out of Fox News and talk radio. He knows what people want to hear and he says it. He thinks something will help him so he says it. Democrats? Sure, call 'em vicious and horrible crime-wanters.

It's times like these that you remember Donald Trump does not actually care about any of this stuff. He does not care about illegal immigrationhe's employed undocumented immigrants at his properties and on construction projects. He does not care about these people in the crowd who support him so enthusiastically, one of whom he shouted out for booing the very mention of Central American countries. Everybody's a mark or an enemy. Do they love me, or do they not love me? The Democrats have chosen to oppose him, so now he'll say whatever's necessary to destroy them. Meanwhile, can you imagine what the Liberal Media would do if Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren called Republicans "vicious, horrible people" who want crime and chaos? The Washington Post fact-checker needles Sanders for intricate healthcare policy claims that...are true.

Is Trump's rapacious cynicism better or worse than being a true believer? I suppose we're about to find out. The run-up to the 2018 elections, where Trump himself was not even on the ballot, were incredibly ugly. Imagine what's about to come over the next 11 months.

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Another Insane Trump Rant, But This One Had a Revealing Moment - Esquire.com