Some of you are thinking he’s gone too far with the joke. Or maybe he went too far when he said we should take Iraq’s oil by force as payment for a war they didn’t ask for. This is not a man who thinks he might someday debate serious politicians in a public forum. This is a man who is winking at the camera and daring you to see the obvious.

Normally I wouldn’t call out a prankster while the prank is in play. But this is a special case because the people who think he’s serious have made up their minds. In order for them to accept that this is a prank, they’d have to accept that they can’t tell the difference between a real candidate and one who is yanking their chains. Brains are not wired for that sort of 180 turn. In the history of humankind, no one has ever said, “I thought I was a brilliant observer of politics but this new information proves that my brain is the size of a tiny mouse turd.” Trump’s prank literally can’t be exposed by anyone but him.