While the mainstream media took a vacation from real work over the last four days to fall into blathering fits about Hillary's pneumonia, Donald Trump got a pass on one of the most irresponsible - and telling - speeches of his entire election campaign.
On the heels of the Commander in Chief forum (when Trump managed at least to sound medicated), he took the podium on Friday in a military town, strayed from the teleprompter and told supporters in Pensacola, Fla., that he'd be happy to start a war with Iran over impolite gestures.
"And by the way - with Iran. When they circle our beautiful destroyers with their little boats, and make gestures to our people that they shouldn't be allowed to make, they will be shot out of the water," Trump asserted. "Believe me."
Never mind that minutes later in the same speech he took Clinton to task for being "trigger happy" and an "unstable person." He said: "We are also going to keep our country out of the endless wars that have defined Hillary Clinton's career."
This from the same guy who insulted the Gold Star family of a decorated fallen U.S. Muslim soldier. This from the same guy who has repeatedly declined to detail his plan for fighting ISIS.
His "gestures" comment seemed to be reference to Iran reportedly harassing another U.S. Navy vessel in the Persian Gulf last week, following an incident on Aug. 23 when a U.S. guided-missile destroyer was in international waters near the Strait of Hormuz. Four ships from Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps approached at high speed and failed to respond to numerous warnings, according to a military spokesman. After two of the Iranian vessels came within 300 yards of the destroyer, all four ships departed.
Earlier in the day before his Pensacola speech, Trump had addressed the Values Voter Summit in Washington, D.C., where he criticized Clinton for being "just too quick to intervene, invade, or to push for regime change with people we don't even know who they are, they take over, and they're far worse."
Yet in Trump's tiny mind, it's OK for him to start a war because, according to him, someone on "little" boats supposedly raises a middle finger to hundreds of sailors on a guided-missile destroyer. Seriously? Who's trigger happy? Who's unstable?
Of course, that's not Trump's only demonstrated lack of logic.
"[Hillary Clinton] could walk into this arena right now and shoot somebody, with 20,000 people watching, right smack in the heart, and she wouldn't be prosecuted, OK? That is what's happened to our country," he said at the same Pensacola rally. His supporters immediately broke into a chant of "lock her up."
Just nine months ago in January, Trump reveled in his primary poll numbers and characterized himself in a similar way: "I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody," he said at a campaign rally in Iowa. "And I wouldn't lose any voters, OK? It's like incredible."
OK for him, but not for her? OK for anyone?
Tragically, all the self-released Trump medical records in the world likely won't address this campaign's most horrifying problem: Trump has a completely warped sense of self and world, and there's no medical test for self-deluded, dangerous, bully syndrome.
The only hope is that voters can find some go-to-your-room medicine for a guy who is willing to start an armed conflict with another country - not to save lives, but to beat his own thin-skinned chest over what he perceives as a hand insult on scratchy video shot from the deck of ship at 300 yards distance.
Heaven help us.