Donald Trump and Steve Bannon deserve each other.
The trouble with this truism is that we Americans and our country deserve far more than the reality-show White House offered by these two men and most of the other clowns who orbit their dim stars.
Bannon and Trump - once bosom buddies and political fiefdom builders - split dramatically and noisily over Bannon interviews that have become public this week. The interviews are included in a soon-to-be-published, tell-all book, "Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House," by Michael Wolff.
The book excerpts, popping up in newspapers and magazines all over, show plenty of clashing egos. Beyond that, however, Wolff's look at Trump's first year in office highlights dark patterns and claims of chaos and incompetence that, starkly put, cannot bode well for our national psyche.
But first, the palace intrigue:
Bannon, a longtime Breitbart editor and Trump campaign adviser whom Trump installed as White House chief strategist then forced out last August, disparaged Trump and his children in the book.
Disparaged may be too mild a verb.
In the book, Bannon tells Wolff the president's daughter and top aide Ivanka Trump is "dumb as a brick." He says the president's son, Donald Trump Jr., and Trump's son-in-law and top aide Jared Kushner were "treasonous" and "unpatriotic" for meeting with the Russians during the campaign. He speculates that Trump Jr. likely took the Russians to meet Trump himself, as well.
On Wednesday, the president responded: "He [Bannon] not only lost his job, he lost his mind."
That may be the most profound thing Donald Trump has ever said. It also may be just another projection of his own mood, motive and modulation.
Of course, it's not the first time Bannon, who came to power saying he wants to "deconstruct" our government, has acted like Trump when there was a reporter in the room.
Bannon, on the record, demeaned the president last month to Vanity Fair, pooh-poohing him as just another "accommodationist" seeking favor from The New York Times. Vanity Fair has also quoted Bannon in private conversations saying Trump had "lost a step" and was like "an 11-year-old child."
Bannon learned from the master of microphone worshippers - Trump himself.
But you know what they say about getting into a stink fight with a skunk: Don't. That's what this is - two skunks locked in this car we call our country.
On Wednesday, the president pointed to Bannon as the one who "pretends to be at war with the media."
And Trump Jr. tweeted: "Steve had the honor of working in the White House & serving the country. Unfortunately, he squandered that privilege & turned that opportunity into a nightmare of backstabbing, harassing, leaking, lying & undermining the President. Steve is not a strategist, he is an opportunist."
But, if an excerpt of the book published at Hollywoodreporter.com - where the author is a regular columnist - is any indication, the palace-intrique scenes are nothing compared to the overall takeaway.
"Donald Trump's small staff of factotums, advisors and family began, on Jan. 20, 2017, an experience that none of them, by any right or logic, thought they would - or, in many cases, should - have, being part of a Trump presidency.
"Hoping for the best, with their personal futures as well as the country's future depending on it, my indelible impression of talking to them and observing them through much of the first year of [Trump's] presidency, is that they all - 100 percent - came to believe he was incapable of functioning in his job.
"At Mar-a-Lago, just before the new year, a heavily made-up Trump failed to recognize a succession of old friends."
Whoa. Wow. Well, well, well. That makes it clear why Trump attorneys have sent a "cease-and-desist" letter to Wolff and his publisher, Henry Holt, on Thursday morning. Good luck with that, Mr. President. America has this thing called a First Amendment right to free speech.
But now more than ever we should worry about the rest of the worker bees in the White House.
We remember something about candidate Trump telling voters: "I will hire the best people."
Unfortunately what it appears he meant was that he would hire a West Wing full of mini-mes.
All of these egos are mirror images of each other, and sadly for us, the White House walls are melting.