Good evening.

This would ordinarily be the place to say the president of the United States doubled

down or tripled down today on his remarks of the weekend, tweeting that four non-white

congresswomen should go back to their home countries, never implying that three of the four

are native-born Americans.

It would also be the place to play their reaction to discuss how many Republicans condemned

or failed to condemn the remarks, followed by questions about where this all fits into

the president's strategy for appealing to the base.

And yeah, we will get to all of that tonight, including what the four congresswomen had to

say.

But as interesting as any or all of those items might be, there are also the things we

talk about so we don't have to bring up something else.

Namely, that what drives the president to say what he says is not just about politics

as some have suggested.

It's not just about winning votes or winning arguments or repeating whatever he just saw

on Fox News.

It's not three-dimensional chess.

It's really something much simpler.

So simple and frankly so ugly that it is tempting to just take it as a given and then move

on to file it away as merely Trump being Trump when that is really the whole point.

Trump being Trump.

What comes out of his mouth is a reflection of who he is and who he's been for as long

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