The “just wait, he’s gonna turn presidential any moment now” crowd is still at it, months after Donald John Trump skulked away from the White House with his schwanz between his atrophied, KFC-bucket-balancin’ gams.

For more than five years after his rambling, racist campaign launch speech, Trump has had every opportunity to prove there was more to him than meets the eye. There isn’t. I’ve looked. They say the eyes are the windows to the soul. Trump’s are more like splotchy peepholes into John Wayne Gacy’s crawlspace. There’s nothing there but rank evil, soul-crushing emptiness, and half-slurped McNugget sauces.

Sure, it’s possible Trump could still see the light, renounce his numerous past outrages, and embrace Western liberal democracy. It’s also possible I’ll suddenly improve upon my 4-inch vertical and join the Milwaukee Bucks roster just in time to snag an NBA championship ring. (Go Bucks! As a native Wisconsinite, I need something to distract me from Ron Johnson’s perpetual awfulness.)

That said, Trump’s legion of apologists is keeping the faith. The guy was president for four years, after all. He must have learned something along the way about fair and effective governance. (Narrator: He didn’t.)

Witness one Conrad Black, the author of A President Like No Other: Donald J. Trump and the Restoring of America. Black apparently thinks there’s still something salvageable in this tire fire of a human being, and he’s decided to die on this Hill. 

Buckle up, folks. This will get weird, starting with the headline. Unless you want to spray your beverage halfway to Alpha Centauri, make sure you’re not drinking anything when you read this. You’ve been warned.

“How Trump can win again: Become the calm, moderate candidate,” Black posits. It just gets goofier from there.

First, the lede:

Sure, Trump can do that. Or he can suggest nuking hurricanes, try to overturn a free and fair election, incite a deadly riot, lobby for putting alligator-filled moats at the southern border, promote unapproved drugs, act like a freshly gelded howler monkey when asked anodyne questions by the media, and generally behave like a marginally less grounded Randy Quaid.

Hmm, the Bushes won three out of four of the elections they competed in after becoming their party’s nominees. John McCain and Mitt Romney lost just as many elections as Trump. And George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush both won the popular vote at least once, whereas Trump never did. What on Gaia’s green globule is this fucknut talking about?

Black rambles on for a half dozen anti-Democrat paragraphs before arriving at the pièce de résistance.

Nostalgia for Trump? Uh, no. The guy is seared into our memories, I’ll give you that. But “nostalgia” implies fond memories. I have nostalgia for eating Cracker Jack on a picnic bench during the summer of ‘76. I don’t have nostalgia for the raucous pink belly I received from my reprobate siblings 10 minutes later.

But this. This! “… if he is wise, he can become a winning figure of comparative Olympian serenity.”

Trump isn’t wise, and never will be. (See also: nearly every news story from the past half-decade.)

Trump’s a loser. Full stop.

A “figure of comparative Olympian serenity?” Next to Trump, Crispin Glover circa 1987 was a figure of comparative Olympian serenity. But Trump himself never, ever will be. 

It’s normal for historians and especially partisans to want to rehabilitate a former president’s image and reputation, but Trump’s rep is trashed. He might as well have smeared those feces on the inner walls of the U.S. Capitol himself. There’s no forgetting Jan. 6—or any of the other 1,460 days he cosplayed as president.

And no amount of gaslighting after the fact can possibly make us forget, no matter how much devotees like Conrad Black try.

It made comedian Sarah Silverman say “THIS IS FUCKING BRILLIANT” and prompted author Stephen King to shout “Pulitzer Prize!!!” (on Twitter, that is). What is it? The viral letter that launched four hilarious Trump-trolling books. Get them all, including the finale, Goodbye, Asshat: 101 Farewell Letters to Donald Trump, at this link. Just $12.96 for the pack of 4! Or if you prefer a test drive, you can download the epilogue to Goodbye, Asshat for the low, low price of FREE.