If you took every true thing President Donald Trump said during Tuesday’s State of the Union address and tattooed it onto the genitalia of a flea, there would still be room for the Gettysburg Address. (Depending on the endowment of the flea and the size of the font you were using.)

For almost two hours on Tuesday night, Trump unleashed a torrent of lies in a desperate attempt to persuade America—and the world—that we all have no idea about the reality we are living in and that he knows better.

Zombified Republican members of Congress clapped like circus seals and brayed like asses on cue as Democrats, with few exceptions, sat more or less inert throughout the president’s bloviatathon. While the contrast may have made Trump and his MAGA legions feel as though their message was getting through, the reality was that the address likely achieved little of consequence.

Trump’s poll numbers will likely remain low and will continue falling. He will achieve little more this year. His standing at home and abroad will not improve.

All in all, it was a craven, meandering, mean-spirited flop. It broke zero new ground. Indeed, it was a version of MAGA for Dummies: the Trump stump speech with a few cheap flourishes that made it seem more like a game show than an address to Congress. “You get a Congressional Medal of Honor! And you get a Congressional Medal of Honor from our lovely spokesmodel Melania! And you get a Purple Heart! And you get reunited with your uncle!”

Amidst the cheeseball hoopla, if there was a theme beyond the astonishing scope of the lies Trump told throughout, it was stolen glory. Trump told stories of heroes—ideally really gory stories; he seemed to get what little energy he had from those—and then have the heroes stand up so the president could soak up the applause for them as though it were for him.

Indeed, confusion over who the heroes actually were was another subtheme of the day. Trump coveted the gold medals around the necks of the U.S. men’s hockey team, who allowed themselves to be used as political props to such a degree that one of the players felt compelled to let the president wear his medal around his neck for a bit.

When a 100-year-old warrior was given one of the two Congressional Medals of Honor that were handed out, Trump actually, Trumpily, produced the mega-cringe moment of the night when he—America’s most famous draft dodger—said he would like to figure out how to........

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