This week in the saga

Tuesday he walks into a room of Chicago economists and spends an hour being asked, politely and repeatedly, how the tariffs would work; the next day he decides the interview went beautifully and posts the reason. Thursday at one he demands a broadcaster be taken off the air over a spliced answer, and calls it the biggest scandal in the history of broadcasting. Thursday night he puts on white tie and tails for the cardinal's charity dinner in New York, where the seat across the dais is empty because she sent a video instead — and the roast, for once, is the easiest room he has been in all year. Then Sunday, in a suburb north of Philadelphia, he ties on an apron over the suit and works twenty minutes at a fryer, salting and shovelling, and hands paper bags through a drive-thru window to cars that were let in for the purpose. It is the picture of the month.