Donald Trump stood beneath shelter on Memorial Day, while Gold Star families sat exposed in the rain. It was the perfect metaphor for this vulgar and degraded age in American life. The commander in chief was dry. The families who carried the unbearable burden of sacrifice were soaked. The image captured the truth of Trumpism better than any poll, speech or slogan ever could.

Abraham Lincoln described the war dead as those who gave “the last full measure of devotion.” Donald Trump has spent his political life mocking devotion, degrading sacrifice and insulting honor. He mocked John McCain for being captured. He called dead Americans “losers” and “suckers.” He turned Arlington into a campaign backdrop. He transformed Memorial Day into another spectacle centered on himself, his grievances and his vanity.

Heather Delaney Reese [link below] captured the obscenity perfectly in her account of the ceremony. The President of the United States couldn’t even summon the minimum level of restraint, dignity or empathy required by the occasion. The performance was grotesque because grotesquerie is all Trump understands. Everything becomes theater. Everything becomes self-glorification. Everything becomes smaller, uglier and cheaper in his presence.

It was a weekend of humiliation for the country.

Pete Hegseth’s commencement speech at West Point felt less like an address to future officers than a parody written by the writers of “Veep.” It was as though Jonah Ryan had stumbled into the office of Secretary of Defense after suffering a catastrophic head injury. The speech was shallow, unserious and unworthy of the institution he addressed....