By now you’ve surely heard that after Donald Trump abruptly canceled his meeting with Democrats on Wednesday, Nancy Pelosi characterized the episode as the latest “temper tantrum” from the man-child in-chief—a description that did not go over well in the White House. The president of the United States spent most of the subsequent 24 hours screaming that he was the picture of calm and in no way out of control, shooting off characteristically unhinged tweets, and forcing staffers to attest to his placid demeanor during an event with American farmers in which he told the group, “I’m an extremely stable genius. O.K.?”

But insisting, despite all evidence to the contrary, that he was and has always been even-tempered and 100 percent chill wasn’t the only move Trump deployed in an effort to demonstrate that anyone critical of his behavior is part of the fake-news conspiracy against him. In addition, he floated the theory that Pelosi is clearly senile. “I’ve been watching her,” he told the room. “I have been watching her for a long period of time. She’s not the same person. She’s lost it . . . The whole Democrat Party is very messed up. They have never recovered from the great election of 2016 . . . Well, Nancy Pelosi was not happy about it, and she is a mess.” Then he did what any leader of the free world whose plate currently includes a trade war with China and a possible real war with Iran: he went home to the East Wing and tweeted a selectively edited video from Fox News to make Pelosi look like she can’t get through a sentence:

(Here’s where we remind you that actual experts have warned that Trump’s tendency to say things like “Tim Apple” and “There is no collusion between certainly myself and my campaign, but I can always speak for myself, and the Russians, zero” raises questions “about his brain health.”)

Of course, Trump wasn’t the only one trying to make the case that the House Speaker is unfit for Office. Also on Thursday, Rudy Giuliani tweeted a distorted video of Pelosi slowed down to make it sound as if she’s drunk and slurring her words, with the note “What is wrong with Nancy Pelosi? Her speech pattern is bizarre.” He later deleted the tweet, but in a text message told reporter Drew Harwell, “I have been noticing a gradual change in her speech pattern and gestures for sometime.” Incidentally, Giuliani has a thing for peddling bullshit theories about women who don’t bow down to Trump. During the 2016 election, he repeatedly claimed, without evidence, that Hillary Clinton’s mental and physical health was in decline, telling Fox News viewers, “Go online and put down ‘Hillary Clinton illness,’ [and] take a look at the videos for yourself.” Also, whatever . . . this is:

According to The Washington Post, analyses of the distorted video indicates it was slowed down to 75 percent of its original speed and then, to correct for how the change would deepen Pelosi’s voice, likely altered to modify her pitch. “There is no question that the video has been slowed to alter Pelosi’s voice,” Hany Farid, a computer-science professor and digital-forensics expert at University of California, Berkeley, told the Post, adding that “it is striking that such a simple manipulation can be so effective and believable to some.”

Naturally, that the video obviously doesn’t reflect reality hasn’t stopped Trump surrogates from seizing on it. On Friday, Lynnette Hardaway and Rochelle Richardson, a.k.a. Diamond and Silk, told Fox & Friends that they are now “questioning [Pelosi’s] mental capacity”—an extremely rich statement from a group of people who support Donald Trump—because “she looks like she’s a nonfunctioning alcoholic, she slurs her words, is rambling over her words.”

In a statement, the House Speaker’s deputy chief of staff told the Post, “We’re not going to comment on this sexist trash.” Her daughter, Christine Pelosi, wrote on Twitter: “Republicans and their conservative allies have been pumping this despicable fake meme for years! Now they are caught. #FactCheck: Madam Speaker doesn’t even drink alcohol!”

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