Talk about fake news. First the Saudi government claimed that Khashoggi walked out of their Istanbul embassy on October 2 and was never seen again. Then they suggested that unnamed rogue forces had done him in. Finally, on Friday, they floated the story that Khashoggi died in some sort of fistfight with 15 Saudi agents.

Trump, for his part, begged people not to jump to conclusions and condemn Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman for allegedly ordering the hit. On Tuesday, the President told The AP, “Well, I think we have to find out what happened first. You know, here we go again with, you know, you’re guilty until proven innocent. I don’t like that. We just went through that with Justice Kavanaugh. And he was innocent all the way . . . . So we have to find out what happened and they are doing a very major investigation.” This is surely the first time that a sitting Supreme Court judge has been compared to an accused murderer.

The Missoula rally was the first of a trifecta of Trumpathons this week. Though most of the diatribe was the pre-masticated rant his base has been swallowing since 2016, there were a few fresh jibes, including a new slogan: “Jobs not mobs,” which argues that the Democrats, whose wishy-washy weakness and lack of leadership has progressives on the brink of despair, are in fact a horde of ravening barbarians, hell-bent on turning America into Venezuela. Trump also tried out the mellifluous “Kavanaugh not caravans,” contrasting Brett with the stream of desperate asylum-seekers wending its way north from Central America.

This caravan is driving the president nuts. On Thursday, he tweeted that he might deploy the military to close the southern border altogether. In a particularly bizarre flight of fancy, he hinted that the Dems and/or George Soros were paying refugees to the make the trip. And last Sunday on 60 Minutes, he refused to deny that he is considering bringing back the reviled child-separation policy. (As of this writing, nearly 250 children remain apart from their families.)

Seemingly undeterred by the Republicans’ plunging prospects among female voters, on Tuesday the president added “Horseface” to the growing roster of offensive names he has called women, which has previously included pig, dog, Miss Piggy, degenerate, slob, wacky, low-IQ person, and Pocahontas. (Why, oh why, did Senator Elizabeth Warren, the subject of this last racist taunt, take the bait, and release the results of her DNA test this week?)

In other news, Trump’s erstwhile attorney, Michael Cohen, has won the switcheroo award of the year for telling CNN on Friday: “Listen, here’s my recommendation. Grab your family, grab your friends, grab your neighbors, and get to the poll, because if not, you are going to have another two or another six years of this craziness. So, make sure you vote, all right?”

And look who’s talking now? Why it’s Nikki Haley, who last week self-deported herself from the U.N. Resplendent in a black evening gown at the annual Al Smith dinner, she first teased Trump, then turned serious and intoned, “In our toxic political environment, I’ve heard some people in both parties describe their opponents as enemies or evil. In America, our political opponents are not evil . . . . In the last two years, I’ve seen true evil. We have some serious political differences here at home. But our opponents are not evil. They’re just our opponents.”

Hey, Nikki! Isn’t the guy who calls Democrats “un-American,” “treasonous,” “unhinged,” and “an angry mob,” the same one you have promised to campaign for in 2020?