“Five and a half pages long, signed in Sharpie and sent the afternoon before the House of Representatives was due to impeach him for abuse of power and obstruction of Congress, the letter officially underscored — for the ‘permanent and indelible record’ — how angry he had become over the prospect of becoming only the third president in history to have this happen to him.” What Trump’s letter to Nancy Pelosi makes permanent and indelible is exactly what kind of a person we’re dealing with here and what kind of a presidency Trump’s enablers are willing to defend. Psychologists may have to add another five and half pages to the DSM (under Impeachmental Disorders). Midway through the typing of Trump’s letter in Word, Clippy deserted to Canada. But believe me, I’m under no illusions that these views are universal. Here’s a headline from planet unreality: Fox’s Lou Dobbs Calls Trump’s Pelosi Letter ‘Elegant,’ Guest Says It’s the ‘Gettysburg Address of Smear Job False Accusations.’ (Four score and seven years should be Trump’s sentence…)

+ Jennifer Rubin in WaPo: It is hard to capture how bizarre and frightening Trump’s letter to Pelosi is. “What is most striking is the spectacle of the letter itself — a president so unhinged as to issue such an harangue; a White House entirely unable to stop him; a party so subservient to him that it would not trigger a search for a new nominee; a right-wing media bubble that will herald Trump for being Trump and excoriate Democrats for driving the president to this point; and a mainstream media not quite able to address a public temper-tantrum (resorting instead to euphemisms such as ‘scorching,’ ‘searing,’ etc.). The letter and the response (or lack thereof) is the perfect encapsulation of the state of American politics — in which one major party has bound itself to the mast of a raging, dangerous narcissist while the other cannot uphold the norms and institutions on which our democracy depends.”