If you've known each other a long time, I feel like I need to be honest with you.

This story makes me want to leave my body.

Leave Trump alone, forget the story.

There's no question.

You threaten someone with a $20 million lawsuit.

It's a thugish tactic.

In fact, the exact sentence used was, they can make your life hell in many different ways.

Hello and welcome to Trumpcast.

I'm Virginia Heffernan.

So there's no real news here in Trumpworld.

The executive branch, tedious paperwork.

The odd ceremony, the endless security briefings.

Keeping all those heads of state with their weird names and identical-looking congressmen,

keeping them all straight, asking politely after their wives and the correspondence and

those donors.

I mean, it takes such a devotion to details, such high principle, a capacity to listen

to patients for policy wonkery, not to mention a commitment to rigid family values.

Natalarns for the squares in DC to be the American president.

I mean, you're...

Those Calvin Coolidge put it, I think the American public wants a solemn ass as president.

And I think I'll go along with them.

A solemn ass.

...