Atop all the others inflicted on us came last week's sickening spectacle of two vengeful, lying, broken old men - one a longtime killer of children, one a petty useful idiot abetting him - alternately celebrating and threatening genocide before "we the peoples of the United Nations." It was created to halt "the scourge of war" and enable us to "live together in peace with one another." Instead, today, we get unspeakable atrocities. Omar El Akkad: "One day everyone will have always been against this."

Even before war criminals spoke at the U.N., everyone was already against everything Trump's done, from his insane, drone-packed arch to the other $1.8 billion vanity projects to his latest tantrum over bad press. Despite multiple court rulings against it, the ensuing press ban is still partly, messily in place, with CNN, MS NOW and Politico facing dubious access, other major media finally finding their spine and solidarity, and the havoc offering us the droll sight of a needy guy who never met a camera he didn’t like in one farcical silent movie, a “shrinking figure gesticulating wildly into the wind.” The attention whore has tried to compensate with wildly weird and illegal PR stunts: Claiming an entire hemisphere, boasting, "Only Trump" and an ad pleading "Love Me" on the taxpayer dime in "an astonishing misuse of public resources more fitting for North Korea."

The final own goal of his attack on the press, teased by a frantic promo, was the launch of Trump TV: The Essentials Station, the White House YouTube channel recast as a 24/7 livestream of Trump's "greatest hits." Cue aJuly speech at Mt. Rushmore about "the communist menace," last year's speech at dinner with King Charles, a 2016 speech in Kentucky recalling the wet stairs he overcame. YouTube's real-time data let the "king of ratings" see it quickly crash and burn, from a paltry 8,000 viewers to half that to 1,000 to 704 as J.D. announced stripping health care from 760,000 people, way below the 2,000-plus watching birds snack on seeds and nuts. Many relished the flop - "Fascism is awesome!" - or suggested new slots: "Wake Up & Rage Tweet, Ketchup-Throwing, They’re Eating our Pets, The Great MAGA Crypto Scam, Wheel of Pardons" and, from 2:01 to 2:02 a.m., “Covfefe.”

Then came a clumsy, swooning welcome - "the deference was deafening" - for his strongman soulmate Chinese President Xi Jinping, the world's biggest jailer of journalists and never mind the "communist menace," with its empty pomp, cartoonish tour of a hole-in-the-ground ballroom and million-year helipad - "He has a great interest in granite" - and zero substance. The next day, with his approval rating "somewhere between Ebola and Ed Sheeran," he waddled into the 81st session of the UN General Assembly and threatened one of its130 participants with war crimes, musing, "Do I annihilate the Islamic Republic quickly and drive them into hell?" Iran's delegation swiftly walked out. Mehdi Hasan: "For shame. The president of the United States goes to the United Nations and threatens genocide against a member state in front of the world. This is where we’re at."

Slurring, stumbling, wandering at unhinged, white nationalist length - details here - Trump also boasted about murdering at least 234 people “at war with civilization” in illegal boat strikes, claimed trans people were a national security risk, celebrated (and inflated) the theft of Venezuela’s oil, inanely declaimed “to the (raping and plundering) victor belong the spoils,” again made up wars he'd "ended," etc. The speech, a "sad and dangerous national embarrassment" with its "ridiculous braggadocio, narcissistic puffery, absurd demonstrable lies, open criminality and deranged, murderous threats" landed "with silence inside the hall and a pile of fact checks outside it, (the) death rattle of a rapist president and what’s left of America’s reputation on the world stage," after which "world leaders went back to making plans that don't include the United States."

Or, in the case of Denmark, subtly mocks them. Trump also created a non-existent backstory for a "deal" on Greenland - "This was long in the making - you could go back many, many decades, probably centuries" - that basically repackages an existing deal signed in 1951; ahead of their meeting held later at the U.N., officials played the Sondheim song Send In The Clowns. At this point, writes Paul Krugman, it may be "Underwear on the Outside” time, a callback to Woody Allen's 1971 film Bananas about a fictional third-world nation's absurd strongman. Most reporting on the U.N. focused on Trump's belligerent rejection of global cooperation or the fact almost everything he said was a lie. The bigger story: "The leader of what used to be the world’s most powerful nation, now collapsing before our eyes, has clearly, undeniably lost his mind."

Other speakers tried to steer the conversation back to reality. Secretary-General António Guterres stressed the primacy of international law, especially in Palestine, calling the birth of the U.N. "an act of defiance (by) people who refuse to surrender the future to fear...who know our futures are bound together." But with accountability: The U.N. deems Gaza "a collective crime," a "live-streamed atrocity...sustained by the complicity of influential third states"; their complicity must be confronted for the rule of law to survive. Holding photos of Iranian children killed in U. S. strikes, Iran's president Masoud Pezeshkian argued it is Trump who has defied international law, while Iran has remained committed to negotiations. “We have only defended ourselves. We are not terrorists." He also called for accountability on all sides, asking "why Israel kills, yet Iran is subject to sanction.”

Israel kills. And Benjamin Netanyahu offered a bellicose "potpourri of lies and incitement." In his "furious, ugly and disgraceful" diatribe, he called........

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