We all know how much President Donald Trump loves superlatives, most especially when they are used in reference to himself or his presidency. This week added yet another one of these superlatives, since Trump is now at the center of the fastest-progressing political scandal ever. Think about it: a mere two weeks ago, nobody knew anything about it; and now we've seen the public release of a president-to-president phone call's semi-transcript, the public release of the whistleblower's slightly-redacted complaint, testimony on the scandal before both houses of Congress, and the start of impeachment proceedings. To say the past week has been a whirlwind doesn't even begin to accurately describe the blinding pace of the growing scandal.

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One of Donald Trump's presidential heroes is Andrew Jackson. Jackson rose to the presidency in 1828 after his first attempt failed. The centerpiece of his second campaign was to shine a bright light on the "Corrupt Bargain" in the House of Representatives, which named John Quincy Adams president in 1824 even though he had fewer Electoral College votes than Jackson (it was a four-candidate race and none of them got an outright Electoral College majority, which threw the election's decision into the House). I was reminded today of a central quote from Jackson's second campaign where he spoke about what had happened in the 1824 election, because it seems downright appropriate when discussing our current president: "There was cheating, and corruption, and bribery too." At this point, that seems to accurately sum up Trump's 2020 campaign as well.

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We're in the midst of a brand-new breaking scandal -- one that's so new it hasn't even been assigned a "-gate" label yet. Ukraine-gate? Kiev-gate? MassiveTrumpCollusion-gate? As was entirely appropriate, Hillary Clinton had the pithiest tweet of the week: "The president asked a foreign power to help him win an election. Again."

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We have to begin today with an apology. Five years ago, without knowing any better, we erroneously reported in this space that there would not be another Friday the 13th which coincided with a full moon until 2049. So it was much to our surprise that we heard that this week we all were going to see another one, only five short years after we feverishly coined the word "selenofriggatriskaidekaphobia" to describe those with the very specific neurotic fear (-phobia) of both full moons (seleno-) and Fridays (-frigga-) the 13th (-triskaideka-).

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Finally, everyone on one stage! That was my reaction before the third 2020 Democratic presidential debate even began, because for the first time it's a one-night affair. Unfortunately, at least 11 candidates have already qualified for the next debate, with a few other candidates hovering on the brink of qualification, so it's looking like we're going to have to wait for the fifth debate to see all the frontrunners on the same stage together again.

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I'm going to begin today's column with an extremely dated pop culture reference, just to warn everyone. The show Happy Days was historic for many reasons, but the only one anyone really remembers today is the contribution of a metaphor for "going on longer than it really should have." When faced with something that fits this description (a television show, a politician, just about any fad, etc.), the go-to phrase has now become "it has jumped the shark." I have no idea how many people who use this phrase saw the original Happy Days episode where Fonzie did actually jump over a shark on water skis, but the phrase now lives independently of its television origin in American idiom. But there's one other Happy Days theme that should worry us all, because the two politicians leading the race for president both seem to be afflicted by it. I speak of the inability of the Fonz to ever use the word "wrong" when applied to himself. He just couldn't say "I was wrong," no matter how hard he tried. This was played as a comedy bit, but while it was funny on television it's not such a laughing matter in the real world of politics.

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You know things are getting bad in Trumpland when Our Dear Leader is openly attacking Fox News for not being servile enough.

In a series of angry tweets, Trump this week called Fox News "HOPELESS & CLUELESS" and ended his rant with:

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It should be taken as a given that the current president of the United States is crazy as a loon. I mean, it's pretty obvious for those who have eyes to see. In the past few days, he boasted of two phone calls from the Chinese to resume trade negotiations. It turns out, though, that these phone calls did not actually happen. The stock market didn't seem to care, and reacted the way Trump wanted, so nobody's making that big a deal of the fact that Trump just made up some (as he would call it) self-serving "fake news." Trump also lied repeatedly about what was talked about during the G-7 meetings, saying that all the other leaders agreed with him on various things like readmitting Russia to the group, the meanness of the American media towards Trump, Trump's stance on Iran, and anything else he dreamed up that he thought he could get away with bragging about. Of course, none of the other world leaders agreed with him on any of it, and a few actually dared to say so. Trump barely even noticed, because he obviously lives in his own personal fantasyland where contradictions and criticisms magically turn into laudatory personal praise. But while all of that is run-of-the-mill craziness for Trump, the wilder story that broke was that Trump has repeatedly suggested that the way American can avoid massive hurricane damage is to just drop nuclear weapons right in the middle of them before they get to our shores.

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The great fear of those who did not support Donald Trump's election in 2016 was that if America hit a crisis point -- a virtual certainty, over a span of four years -- Trump would prove to be dangerously unstable and not know how to deal with it. The consequences could be alarming, as Ted Cruz joked about on the campaign trail at the time:

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This week, the Wall Street Journal revealed that Donald Trump, for some strange reason, now wants to try to buy Greenland again. The Washington Post later followed up on the story:

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