He spoke without a teleprompter. He cursed in the East Room. He called the House speaker a “horrible person.” He lorded his power over a room full of deferential Republicans. He mocked a former GOP presidential nominee and his 2016 Democratic rival. He played the victim again and again.
Two days after President Trump delivered what aides called an “optimistic” State of the Union address that made no mention of his historic impeachment, he ranted for more than an hour at the White House on Thursday in a “celebration” of his Senate acquittal a day earlier. But the mood — at least his mood — was not particularly celebratory.
Trump was angry, raw, vindictive, aggrieved — reflecting the id of a president who has seethed for months with rage against his enemies. This was the State of Trump.