This week in the saga

The grief becomes an instrument, and it takes six days. Tuesday afternoon the last of the four criminal cases against him dies in Georgia: the prosecutors disqualified once and for all, and he reads the ruling out in capitals. Wednesday night, twenty-two minutes after celebrating the cancellation of a late-night host, he designates a movement a major terrorist organisation and recommends that everyone funding it be investigated. Friday evening the third boat is destroyed. Saturday he tells a country on the other side of the world to give back an airbase or bad things are going to happen. And Saturday evening he writes to his own Attorney General by her first name, in public, and quotes his supporters back at her: same old story as last time, all talk, no action — what about the former director, the congressman, the state attorney general? They are all guilty as hell, and nothing is going to be done. It is not an instruction, exactly. Five days later a grand jury returns an indictment.