Ruffles and Churlishness

Did you listen to Donald Joffrey Trump venting his spleen all over the National Prayer Breakfast and White House East Room?

If so, you have my condolences. I had been listening to NPR yesterday and had to turn it off lest I fall violently ill.

I'll let Chris Cillizza pick through the sea of bile:

Trump spent the bulk of his stream-of-consciousness "speech" savaging his various enemies, which included, well, almost everyone not in the room.
"It was evil, it was corrupt," Trump said of the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election, which concluded that the Russians sought to actively interfere to help Trump and hurt Hillary Clinton.
"We caught 'em in the act ... dirty cops, bad people," Trump said of, well, something.
"We went through Russia, Russia, Russia ... and it was all bullshit," Trump said.
"Little did we know we were running against some bad and evil people," Trump said.
"A man who got James Comey to choke -- and he was just talking in his regular voice," Trump said of Iowa Sen. Chuck Grassley. (Trump went on to call Comey, the former FBI director, a "sleazebag.")
"There were some that used religion as a crutch. ... A failed presidential candidate so things can happen when you fail so badly running for president," Trump said of Sen. Mitt Romney, who voted to convict Trump on abuse of power.
"A guy who can't stand the fact that he ran one of the worst campaign in the history of the country," Trump added on Romney.
"Two low-lifes," Trump said of former FBI officials Lisa Page and Peter Strzok.
"Adam Schiff is a vicious horrible person," Trump said of the California Democrat.
"Nancy Pelosi is a horrible person. ... I doubt she prays at all," Trump said of the Speaker of the House.
"They want to destroy our country," Trump said of Democrats.
"Top scum," Trump said of the FBI leadership.

Hoarseness indicating that he must have been screaming late into the night and bellowing at the White House staff all morning, Trump singled out Senator Mitt Romney, the sole Republican to vote his conscience, for special abuse.

"I don't like people who use their faith as justification for doing what they know is wrong," Trump said Thursday at the National Prayer Breakfast, a typically apolitical event.
That statement was a not-so-veiled reference to Romney, who said on the Senate floor ahead of his vote: "As a Senate juror, I swore an oath before God to exercise impartial justice."
Trump doubled down on his castigation of Romney during an East Room speech in which he declared victory.
"And then you had some that used religion as a crutch. They never used it before," Trump said. "But you know, it's a failed presidential candidate, so things can happen when you fail so badly running for president."
Trump later added, when addressing Utah's other Republican senator, Mike Lee, at the victory ceremony, "Say hello to the people of Utah. And tell them I'm sorry about Mitt Romney."

The two events were disgusting, petulant, churlish performances that whoever the Democratic nominee is this fall should probably force us to listen to again and again.

But as Cillizza points out, what is even worse is that all the Republicans in the East Room clapped and cheered all of this.

Well, that's not terribly surprising. We've seen the antics of Jim Jordan and Devin Nunes and Rand Paul and the rest throughout this impeachment process. We've seen Mitch McConnell and Lindsey Graham swear an oath to be impartial in the Senate trial after they publicly announced that they would not.

But what astonishes me is that, by all accounts that I've read, not one person walked out of that heretofore non-political National Prayer Breakfast.

We all know that Trump wouldn't know Two Corinthians from Article Two of the Constitution. But nobody was offended by his self-righteous tantrum at the podium?

None of the clergymen and women who told reporters how disappointed they were? Not even the featured speaker whose talk was all about going beyond mere civility and tolerance to love one's enemies and reject contempt?

Nobody?