Donald Trump’s latest supervillain routine isn’t helping his cause

| 9:09 am EDT March 30, 2019
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Imagine you’re a criminal, and most people know you’re a criminal because they’ve seen you commit a number of your crimes in plain view, yet you’ve convinced a corrupt lawman to falsely declare your innocence. Most people aren’t inclined to buy it, but you really want them to buy it, so how do you behave? If you’re a remotely normal person, you suddenly start acting on your best behavior, so that the undecided people might conclude your false exoneration rings true.

Then there’s Donald Trump, who is, of course, anything but normal. Trump went to great trouble to install a new Attorney General for the sole purpose of announcing that a damning secret investigative report about Trump somehow exonerates him instead. Most of the media then gave Trump a few days headstart by reporting the obvious ruse as if it were fact instead of a ruse.

But instead of using that window of presumed innocence to try to come off as, you know, innocent, Trump is behaving arguably his most derangedly yet. At his rally last night he called House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff a “pencil neck” while whining about all the “ridiculous bullshit” that the Democrats were throwing at him.

Wait, does this sound like a guy who actually believes he’s been exonerated, and that his troubles are over? Or does it sound more like a guy who’s frustrated because he knows this is merely a brief respite for him, and that his troubles have just begun? Trump speaks and acts more like a movie supervillain by the day. Sure, his base loves it, but they don’t decide his fate. That role falls to the people in the middle, who are still trying to figure out if Trump is a deranged criminal or not. He’s rapidly making it easier for them to figure out the answer.