Somehow this was only the third-most obnoxious thing he’s said in the past 48 hours.

The question with Trump for the past 15 months is how much he believes his own BS about the election being stolen. Is it a knowing lie cynically manufactured to convince his fans that he’s an invincible winner? Or has his own psychological need to believe he’s an invincible winner forced him to conclude with all sincerity that he was cheated?

I lean towards the second explanation but now and then he’ll casually describe what happened in 2020 as him having lost and then I wonder.

This new statement is in that category. Someone who rightly won the election and had it stolen during the vote-counting process wouldn’t describe righting that wrong as “overturning the election.”

New statement from former President Donald Trump. Of course, Pence was right, and he showed strength and character standing up to Trump and doing the right thing in the days leading up to and including January 6, 2021. pic.twitter.com/R1doXhhTnC

— Byron York (@ByronYork) January 31, 2022

The Electoral Count Act is 135 years old. The reason Congress is moving to revise or replace it after 135 years is because until 2020 no president had ever contrived to distort what it permitted the vice president to do in the name of clinging to power. Elections need to be “Trump-proofed” now by clarifying the rules, not because the VP ever plausibly enjoyed the power to nullify 81 million votes but because a crazed demagogue was able to convince a meaningful number of Americans that he did.

Trump is telling on himself with this statement, too. It makes no sense for a Republican to argue that the vice president has the power to reverse election results when a Democratic administration is in office. If you take Trump seriously here, he’s claiming that Kamala Harris might lawfully contrive a reason not to accept Trump’s own victory at the polls in 2024 and hand Biden a second term. But Trump knows that Biden and Harris would never stoop to that. Only Trump himself would. And so he’s arguing in his own interest here, no one else’s.

The second-most obnoxious thing he said came at Saturday night’s rally in Texas, when he hinted at pardons for the insurrectionists if he returns to power:

Trump says if he’s re-elected, he may pardon people prosecuted for their actions on January 6th pic.twitter.com/VLlkGyUr32

— Acyn (@Acyn) January 30, 2022

Trump always couches his corruption in terms of “fairness.” He’s not promising to give all of the rioters a free pass for trying to stage a coup at the Capitol on his behalf, just the ones who’ve been treated unfairly. But in context, as he plainly eyes another run for president, what he’s effectively doing here is dangling pardons at anyone who might meddle in the process in 2024 to ensure his victory. If you storm the Capitol next time or if you’re a state official who runs afoul of federal law in your zealousness to rig a tight swing-state election in Trump’s favor, rest assured that you’ll do no time. It’s a naked inducement to corruption.

Which brings us to the most obnoxious soundbite:

After ranting about the prosecutors investigating him, Trump calls the prosecutors racist and says if they do anything illegal, he hopes there are massive protests in DC, New York, and Atlanta pic.twitter.com/RnY6F5OJNv

— Acyn (@Acyn) January 30, 2022

Again, Trump is smart enough not to say what he obviously means, couching his point in language about “protests” instead of violence. If he had any innocence about how one might lead to the other after a hefty dose of political incitement, that innocence should have ended on January 6. But he’s not innocent; this is actually par for the course for him. Remember that, when there was talk of GOP delegates refusing to award him the nomination in 2016, he hinted at riots if he was denied. His buddy Roger Stone went as far as to suggest that angry Trumpers would visit the delegates in their hotel rooms at the convention. The “law and order” strongman loves the idea of mobs beating people on his behalf, which explains why he was reportedly “delighted” by images from the battle at the Capitol on the day of Biden’s certification in 2021.

Having lived through one January 6, he’s open to instigating another if some D.A. somewhere finds probable cause that he committed a crime. America’s never seen anyone like him, certainly not at this level of national prominence. Which is why Liz Cheney can’t move on:

Trump uses language he knows caused the Jan 6 violence; suggests he’d pardon the Jan 6 defendants, some of whom have been charged with seditious conspiracy; threatens prosecutors; and admits he was attempting to overturn the election.

He’d do it all again if given the chance.

— Liz Cheney (@Liz_Cheney) January 31, 2022

He would. And he told us that as clearly as he could this weekend. “No matter how much damage he causes to the country, Trump will never learn anything from the consequences of his actions,” a disgusted Phil Klein wrote this morning. “The only way to start to change things is for Republican voters pick somebody else in 2024 who does not behave like Trump. Until then, he is not going anywhere, and elected Republicans will remain too afraid to criticize him for fear of retribution should he return to power.”

I’m not so sure that Trump hasn’t learned anything from his actions. He’s learned that he’ll pay no price within his own party for staging a coup attempt that ultimately turned violent, right?

Why, Republicans are even planning to reward him for having done so by nominating him again in 2024, possibly unopposed.

Trump’s go-to strategy for managing his own political messes is DARVO — deny, attack, reverse victim and offender. According to the Daily Beast, he’s planning to pressure the new GOP majority next year into following that strategy with respect to January 6 too:

According to three people familiar with the matter, Trump has privately told GOP lawmakers, congressional candidates, and operatives in recent months that Republicans on Capitol Hill should be prepared to launch a full-blown investigation to “get to the bottom of” how FBI agents supposedly caused violence and mayhem on Jan. 6. The theory that the feds somehow orchestrated or caused the rioting at the Capitol is groundless, but it has nevertheless been embraced in influential spheres of Republican politics, in Trumpland, and in right-wing media and online culture. The appeal, of course, lies in the attempt to shift obvious blame off of the 45th U.S. president and conservatives.

In these conversations, the sources recounted, Trump was emphatic that this should be a priority for GOP lawmakers next year, assuming that Republicans take back the House and Senate after the 2022 midterm elections—and regain all the aggressive oversight and subpoena powers that come with a majority.

If he gets indicted and some of his more excitable fans smash up a DA’s office somewhere, rest assured that that’ll also be instantly spun as a “deep state” psy op abetted by Antifa. But Trump will watch the video of the office being ransacked all day. And he’ll be “delighted.”