Even by the standards we’re all used to, President Donald Trump’s performance at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner on Friday night was strange. And the fact of it – from the style of his halting speech to the substance of his vengeful message to a group of journalists who had handed him a microphone – made it clear that he is now in some kind of spiral. A public figure who, more than any politician or celebrity in our history, has placed the desire for approval at the center of his brand is facing his waning popularity. (His approval rating was one of the topics Trump touched on in a speech that felt less like what he calls “the fabric” than a ramble.) He doesn’t like that his style is falling out of favor, and he’ll make sure, for the next two years or maybe even longer, that we know that’s not the case.

Trump’s speech Friday night served as a rerun of the planned speech he was due to give at the original WHCD 2026 in April, which was marred by a gunman shooting inside the Washington Hilton. He had promised, then, to revile the press; On a rescheduled and bleaker night months later, he at first seemed unsure how to act. “Let’s have some fun,” he said. “What are we doing here? Is this supposed to be funny? Am I supposed to be serious? Am I supposed to be a comedian?” But the old reflexes reappeared: just before this, Trump had complained about the night’s awards, which had gone to several journalists whose work (naturally, given their profession covering the current administration) had been contrary to his interests. “This has not been an easy night, with all those awards,” he said. “Do I have something to say?” He would later criticize journalists such as CNN’s Kaitlan Collins and the Wall Street Journal’s Josh Dawsey by name.

It’s an article of faith among the online #Resistance that the fact that Trump never won an Emmy for “The Apprentice” is a crucial part of his origin story; However, just because an idea has been dulled by repetition does not mean that it is false. The White House Correspondents’ Dinner is an evening of entertainment programming and an awards ceremony. The latter seems to activate something primordial within Trump; the former presents him with an opportunity to redefine reality on his own terms and force an increasingly bored and silent public to follow suit. (In fact, during his speech, Trump recalled the 2011 Correspondents’ Dinner, at which he was brutally roasted by then-President Barack Obama, as a fun evening that he enjoyed, especially because it felt good to be in the spotlight. That’s not how the event is widely remembered!)

There was an air of failure about the night: Like any inept emcee, Trump began blaming anonymous joke writers for the basic material (light, sub-Friars Club material that lovingly roasted allies Nicki Minaj and Bari Weiss) falling flat, but his own performance seemed oddly edgy. In the past, Trump has dominated journalists. In fact, he had told the world that was what he planned to do at the first version of this event in April. Instead, though, Trump seemed offended and almost frightened by the crowd in front of him as he talked about his own popularity, diminishing as he ran through tired material: the decline in Oscar ratings over time, for example, or his antipathy toward Chris Christie, Bruce Springsteen and Jane Fonda.

Trump’s fury against the Oscars once had a certain charge. That’s not because of his claims that the show’s ratings are down because of how liberal celebrities are (there’s a lot more to it than that), but because, as an apparent vanguard of a seismic cultural shift, Trump had the power to subsume basically any entity. Now, however, it is sadly predictable. This man has been the defining element of American politics for ten years. We know you care a lot about awards! We don’t need to be told that again!

That, more than grief over the American president hounding reporters or mild bewilderment at not being able to get a Borscht belt joke about an elderly senator unable to consummate his marriage any longer, feels like the conclusion to an hour of irritating and pointless speech. The strange and sometimes unknowable mind that even recently gave us phrases like “the late, great Hannibal Lecter” is now obsessed with a public that, in the face of inflation and an unpopular war in Iran, no longer laughs. And the response of that mind is to return to safe and comfortable territory, to re-fight old battles with Rosie O’Donnell and with various award bodies. The show has lost even the lurid appeal it might have had for Trump’s morbidly curious critics. And yet it will go on and on. Trump promised, jokingly but not, to run for re-election (which the Constitution prohibits) in 2028. And yet, listening to his deflated speech, one could tell his heart wasn’t in it. Maybe he was thinking about who had won the awards earlier that night.