Earlier this week, JD Vance revealed that Donald Trump told the envoys tasked with negotiating a peace deal with Iran to "use the [memorandum of understanding] to refill the world's oil economy, refill some stocks and then to see where the hand is," by which he meant that the administration is buying time to get gas prices down before possibly starting the war again.

I don't think the vice president was supposed to say that out loud. As the leader of the American delegation, such a public admission probably wasn't the best strategy. Then again, that's how the Trump administration rolls, starting at the top. Vance was just emulating his boss.

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Verbal incontinence and erratic behavior defined Trump's first term as president. Even as administration officials like John F. Kelly, his second White House chief of staff, and Jim Mattis and Mark Esper, his first two defense secretaries, tried to contain the president's worst impulses, they were often unsuccessful. Trump seemed congenitally undisciplined, unable to stop himself from articulating every thought that passed through his head, usually to brag, blame or threaten. The result was a presidency that was, in a word, unstable.

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But Trump's old compulsion to behave erratically and shoot his mouth off is now combined with a megalomania that has him building monuments to himself and musing openly about being included in the pantheon of dictators like Joseph Stalin and Adolf Hitler. Today he's driven by a belief that he is omnipotent, and nothing he does will have any negative consequences. He has come to believe that whatever he says is the right thing, no matter what. If he gets blowback, he doubles down, more convinced than ever that his instincts are correct. He is impervious to criticism now because he literally believes he can do no wrong, and there are tens of millions of people who believe that too.

Among those are members of the Supreme Court, who earlier this week ruled that Trump can deport hundreds of thousands of Haitians and Syrians -- despite dozens of examples of his own offensive, bigoted comments, which were cited by Justice Elena Kagan, that showed a racial animus that violates the Constitution's guarantee of equal protection -- and every tenet of basic human decency. The Court's conservative majority might as well have been wearing one of the red hats that say "Trump was right about everything."

The legal win -- as well as his loss in the birthright citizenship case -- no doubt put more fuel in the president's tank. As the midterms approach and as he becomes increasingly cornered, we can expect his unpredictable behavior to only escalate.