What did Donald Trump do today?

He ranted about his ballroom at length.

Last year, Trump destroyed the East Wing of the White House, without permission from Congress. He did this with as much secrecy as is possible, hastily knocking it down behind construction barriers after lying to the American public that he was only making minor alterations to it. He had claimed that the ballroom he wanted to build "wouldn't interfere" with the East Wing immediately before having it destroyed.

Since then, despite an obsessive interest in the proposed ballroom's construction, Trump has been held up by legal challenges. A federal judge ruled earlier this month in favor of the National Trust for Historic Preservation, the agency established by law to protect historical buildings, and ordered a halt to construction of the ballroom. Today, the same judge clarified that an exception he had made for the construction of national security facilities under the ballroom was not a blank check to construct the whole thing anyway.

This outraged Trump to the point that he spent the whole afternoon posting four lengthy rants to his boutique social media website, railing against the Republican-appointed Richard Leon as a "Trump Hating Judge" and making absurd claims about the planned ballroom. Some of the most outrageous:

• Trump asserted, as he often does, that the ballroom is "free" because it is being paid for by corporate sponsors. Even if this weren't a bribe—and Trump has made clear that he regards contributions to the construction fund as the cost of doing business with his White House—it's still not true that taxpayers won't end up paying for it. The "donations" that corporations are making are tax-deductible and secret, so money comes out of the budget either way. Trump also recently gave a Luxembourg steel company a special break on tariff rates in exchange for a "donation" of $34 million worth of steel, reducing revenue and undermining the American steel industry at the same time. 

• Trump also said, and this is a direct quote, that "The Ballroom is deeply important to our National Security" because it will contain "Top Secret Military Installations." Setting aside the question of how secret they are if Trump is tweeting about them, the judge's order doesn't prevent Trump from building an underground bunker if that's what he wants to do. It simply prevents him from violating the law by building an entire new structure on the grounds of the People's House without authorization from the people's representatives in Congress. 

• Trump insisted that nobody had legal standing to stop him. In reality, of course, Trump is not the whole government, and doesn't rule by fiat, especially where Congress has given its own agencies jurisdiction. 

• Finally, Trump claimed that the ballroom was "not a joke to me, or the people of America." It's completely clear that Trump is deadly serious about the ballroom. As for the American people, polls show they overwhelmingly think it's a joke, and a pretty bad one.

The posts appeared at 2:45, 3:47, 4:05, and 6:41. Trump then reposted all of them again about a half an hour after the last one. They come to a grand total of 782 words. 

Why does this matter?

• A president ranting that "The Ballroom is deeply important to our National Security" is deeply embarrassing. 

• Obsessive fixation on grandiose schemes is not a sign of good mental health. 

• Even by Trump standards, this is bizarre, and sad.