Trump's Primetime Show was a Flop, but it was also a Preview

Trump is going to steal the midterms. He made that clear this week. When will people wake up?

Nobody watched. That’s the story nobody in the White House wants told. There was better television on. There is always better television on now, which is the real humiliation, the one that only amps up the crazy. Rants about a stolen election he didn’t win have gone from spectacle to wallpaper. America has seen the routine enough times to know every beat, and the terrible thing about routine is that it stops being frightening and starts being weather, something you stop checking for and just dress around.

Here is the part that should terrify his handlers: his malignant narcissism has become so boring people are not paying attention. And not getting the attention, in this particular man, is not a relief. It is an accelerant. A grievance ignored is a grievance that metastasizes. The less the room looks at him, the more he needs the room to burn, and a man whose sense of self depends entirely on the size of the audience does not take a shrinking one quietly.

Consider, as evidence of a mind…