What did Donald Trump do today?

He imagined a new, even more absurd thing he won't be building in Washington.

This July 4th will be the 250th anniversary of American independence. Trump doesn't have any power over how Americans will choose to celebrate it, or even how the federal government will for the most part, but it is one of the few remotely job-related things he's had any energy for in his second term. 

In particular, he'd promised an UFC mixed-martial arts cage match on the White House lawn. This would benefit its CEO Dana White, a close friend and political ally of Trump's, and Trump in turn would benefit from a tame audience and athletes chosen for their willingness to praise Trump—something he rarely gets when he attends sporting events in public. (Relatedly, Trump will not be attending the Super Bowl in San Francisco next week, supposedly because it's "just too far away.")

Today, he claimed that he was "building literally a stadium" for the UFC match that would hold 100,000 people. He did not say where, how, or with whose money he would be doing this, but given that he won't be doing it at all, it wouldn't really matter if he had.

This is what a stadium that holds 100,000 people looks like. It is almost as big as the entire White House grounds.

 

This is the newest NFL stadium, SoFi Stadium, about halfway through its construction, which took six years and cost $6 billion. It only holds 70,000 spectators.

   

It's tempting to think that this absurd claim might have been an attempt to draw attention away from certain other developments in the news today. But Trump also thinks that he is building a bigger version of Paris' Arc de Triomphe in time for the Fourth of July, which is a little over five months away. Then again, he also had grand plans for the Soviet-style military parade he ordered up for his birthday last year, and was furious with the results as millions of Americans attended protests against him that day instead.

Why does this matter?

• If Trump is deliberately lying about this, it can only be because he thinks Americans are incredibly stupid. 

• If he's not deliberately lying, he's having vivid delusions and shouldn't be making any decisions for himself, let alone the country.