The Times published a transcript of its meeting with Trump yesterday. Le tout Facebook is talking about it, so I hastened to find it. It will probably take me all day to read it though, because I’ll have to take frequent breaks, because reading unscripted Trump is so abrading to the nerves.

I just can’t get over how thick he is. I feel as if I should take that as read and focus on the substance, but I find it difficult. The thickness has a lot to do with why the substance is what it is. The first extended passage reveals it in all its chattering nakedness:

TRUMP: O.K. Well, I just appreciate the meeting and I have great respect for The New York Times. Tremendous respect. It’s very special. Always has been very special. I think I’ve been treated very rough. It’s well out there that I’ve been treated extremely unfairly in a sense, in a true sense. I wouldn’t only complain about The Times. I would say The Times was about the roughest of all. You could make the case The Washington Post was bad, but every once in a while I’d actually get a good article. Not often, Dean, but every once in awhile.

“Special.”

Look, I have great respect for The Times, and I’d like to turn it around. I think it would make the job I am doing much easier. We’re working very hard. We have great people coming in. I think you’ll be very impressed with the names. We’ll be announcing some very shortly.

The desperately stunted vocabulary is one index, but the complete incomprehension of “the job he is doing” and its relationship to the press is another. He thinks it’s legitimate for him to ask the Times to make his job easier!

Everybody wanted to do this. People are giving up tremendous careers in order to be subject to you folks and subject to a lot of other folks. But they’re giving up a lot. I mean some are giving up tremendous businesses in order to sit for four or maybe eight or whatever the period of time is. But I think we’re going to see some tremendous talent, tremendous talent coming in. We have many people for every job. I mean no matter what the job is, we have many incredible people. I think, Reince, you can sort of just confirm that. The quality of the people is very good.

That’s the next president. That’s why I have to take a break at that point, in order to recover.