I generally avoid Maureen Dowd, but she summons some eloquence on the Monster in Chief:

The 71-year-old president’s pathological inability to let go of slights; his strongman reflex to be the aggressor and bite back like a cornered animal, without regard for societal norms; his lack of self-awareness about the power he commands and the proportionality of his responses; his grotesque hunger for flattery and taste for Tony Soprano tactics; his Pravda partnership with David Pecker, the head honcho at The National Enquirer, which has been giving Trump the Il Duce treatment while sliming his political opponents, the “Morning Joe” anchors and Megyn Kelly — these are all matters that should alarm men and women equally.

Trump has moved his shallow kiddie wading pool of gossip and ridicule from Trump Tower to the White House, where it is so outlandishly out of place that it often feels like we have a Page Six reporter as our president.

The cornered animal and the kiddie wading pool are good metaphors.

Before he got to D.C., Trump was used to media that could be bought, sold and bartered with. He is not built for this hostile environment and it shows in his deteriorating psychological state. Even though he’s in the safest space of all, he’s not in a safe space.

Trump has always been obsessed with looks — his own, men’s and women’s. One of his favorite phrases is “Here’s the beauty of me.” He walks through life as though he’s the judge in an ’80s swimsuit contest — even with his own wives and older daughter. “She’s got the best body,” was his typical refrain about Ivanka.

Or as though he’s Mark Zuckerberg at Harvard, grading all the female students on their looks. Word is he’s thinking about running for president next time.

Then we get a bit of new information:

I gave Trump the benefit of the doubt after his comment on Megyn Kelly about “blood coming out of her wherever” when he claimed he meant her nose. But later, a longtime Trump associate told me that Trump had practiced that line before he said it on CNN and that it was meant to evoke an image of Kelly as hormonal.

No low is too low.