Let's begin this week with a stunner of a statement -- one that you might not have noticed in the news: Donald Trump apparently now wants to sell weapons to China.

The mainstream media has been doing a pathetically bad job of covering Trump for over a decade now, but you would think that news of this magnitude would have broken through. You'd be wrong about that, for the most part. The fact that the president of the United States is even contemplating selling weapons to China, at any other point in modern history, would have been a blockbuster of a story. All the other politicians would be weighing in on the subject (hopefully, to denounce it as a monumentally stupid idea). Pundits would be talking about it for weeks. But it was such a minor story that it appeared as a tiny blip and then sank like a stone beneath all the other idiocy emanating from the White House.

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Donald Trump just hosted the leader of China on a state visit, and in the end it turned out to be a total flop. No big announcements happened, no big deals were cut, in fact nothing much of anything took place, other than Trump trying desperately to impress Xi Jinping with his new heliport and all the other laughable modifications he's done to the White House. Xi wasn't notably impressed (of course), but he did promise two more giant pandas would be heading to America soon, so that's something, at the very least.

The truly epic part of this failure at summitry was that none of it was caught on the television cameras. Which must have thoroughly cheesed off Trump, for whom an event that doesn't appear on television simply does not exist.

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Donald Trump just signed a new "deal" (or maybe: a "new" deal) with Denmark and Greenland. The scare quotes are there to signify the fact that this really isn't a new deal at all -- it mostly just reaffirms the existing agreement that has been in place since the dawn of the Cold War, back in 1951. But the leaders of Greenland and Denmark were smart enough to know that repackaging what was already in place would soothe Trump's bruised ego and gave him a performative signing ceremony he could brag about. This shows the rest of the world that coddling Trump the way you would a small infant is often the best path forward for other world leaders.

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We're going to begin today with a record-setting number. Today, the nationwide average of the price of diesel fuel hit a new high of $6.05 per gallon. It's the first time in American history that diesel has sold for more than six bucks a gallon, in fact. The price of diesel has risen around 20 cents within the past week, which is going to be felt by everyone. Your car or truck may not run on diesel, but you know what does? Farmers' tractors and all their other farm equipment. And the trucks and trains that transport all the food farmers produce -- as well as just about everything else you buy -- to your local stores and supermarkets.

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There's a political cartoon out there just waiting to be drawn. Picture a coat-check window, with a line of people in front of it. But instead of coats, the sign says "Spinal Check." The person behind the counter is handing the person they're waiting on a full spine, while saying: "Here you go, Senator! Once you get it reinstalled, you'll find it's really liberating to get your spine back!" ...or something along those lines. The people in line would (if the cartoonist was good enough) resemble prominent Republicans who are now increasingly breaking with Donald Trump's agenda, of course.

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This Wednesday, we will hit a political milestone which is rather grim for me to contemplate (please read this as a trigger warning: this is going to be a very dismal column, so please stop reading now if you aren't in the mood for that sort of thing). On May 20th, Donald Trump will have been in office for exactly one-third of his second term. It will mark 16 months from when he was sworn in -- but the grim part is that this means we've still got twice as long as what we've all just been through before his term will finally be over. When you consider what has already happened so far, contemplating another 32 months of it is downright frightening.

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It's pretty clear by now that Donald Trump sees war as nothing more than a video game. Having avoided going to war as a young man (by paying a doctor to lie about his non-existent "bone spurs"), he has no concept of what a real war is like. Nor is he interested in finding out. His daily briefings reportedly include a two-minute video of American bombs and missiles "blowin' stuff up." And he has no overall plan or even any clear objectives left in his war of choice against Iran. He's just making it up as he goes along, while attempting to gaslight the country to believe his own warped reality.

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Donald Trump seems to be determined to break as many campaign promises as he possibly can, in the shortest period of time possible. Conveniently (for Democrats), he is doing all of this right at the start of the midterm campaign season, as the first states conduct their primaries. This seems like a rather spectacular way to commit political suicide, but then again Trump is a master at avoiding consequences, so who really knows how it will all play out?

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There's a certain type of young child who gets that phrase written about him on his early school report cards. The type who has to be the center of everything, all the time. Who always has to be the one who picks what games the other children play. Who, when losing one of those games, angrily throws the game board to the floor, scattering all the pieces, while yelling: "You cheated!" Who insults the other children and mocks them mercilessly for any perceived shortcomings. Who has an incredibly thin skin when mocked himself. Who never takes the blame for anything or admits any wrongdoing. Who throws epic tantrums at the drop of a hat. In a word: a bully.

Donald Trump, our toddler-in-chief, is in the midst of one of those incandescent tantrums. His war isn't going anywhere near as well as he thought it would, and the fact that Iran has effectively shut down the Strait of Hormuz is making him apoplectic with rage. He is now demanding that other countries of the world save him from his missteps, by sending their warships into the Strait to escort oil tankers and other ships. But he's finding that the rest of the world is not exactly leaping to help him out, which shouldn't come of much of a surprise to anyone, considering how he has treated all of America's closest allies up to this point.

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I was inspired to write that headline as I was reading a review of Donald Trump's State Of The Union speech in the New York Times. A group of their political commentators were asked about various aspects of the speech, and under the subject heading of: "What Else Mattered," Binyamin Appelbaum responded:

When Roman emperors ran out of ideas, they promised bread and circuses. Trump's speech was full of circuses, including a lengthy celebration of the U.S. men's Olympic hockey team. But he's no Roman emperor: He made a point of reminding the American people that his administration is providing a lot less food to the poor (having "lifted" 2.4 million people off food stamps).

[Just to give credit where it is due....]

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