When does the Trump train stop?

War of 1899-1902. When Trump recycled the anecdote during the 2016 campaign, historians did their fact-checking. But Trump clearly reads alternative historians, because the story is still good enough for him.

This was Trump’s hair-trigger response to the terror in Barcelona, where at least 13 people were killed in an attack claimed by Isis. He wrote, on Twitter, without the filter of facts or experts, that we must ‘‘study what General Pershing of the US did to terrorists when caught. There was no more Radical Islamic Terror for 35 years!’’

His retelling of the myth is offensive on too many levels to count.

There were multiple points on the campaign trail when Trump could have and should have been stopped by those in his own party.

But each new low revealed a further new low until we became both immune to the shocks and somehow convinced that sanity would prevail when the seriousness of the election was put before voters.

It is clear that the white supremacists who marched in Charlottesville, Virginia, and chanted ‘‘Heil Trump!’’ were emboldened by this president. They also took heart from his slow and weaselly responses that failed to properly condemn the racist violence. So many business leaders have resigned in disgust from his business advisory councils that the groups had to be disbanded.

At his most absurd, Trump pointed out that at least the racists had a permit to assemble. But absurdity was everywhere. Some marchers looked overtly fascist. Others dressed as militia, with guns and army-surplus camouflage. A further group wore Trump’s golf costume – a white shirt and beige pants.

During the the week, Trump kept his following updated on social media. We saw his aversions, contradictions and dissembling. We even noticed the incredible bad taste of the President of the United States retweeting a violent image of a ‘‘Trump Train’’ running over a CNN reporter just three days after Heather Heyer was run over and killed in Charlottesville.

The assumption is that death is a fit punishment for the ‘‘fake news’’ reporters from CNN that Trump has sparred with. But the reality is that someone needs to find a way to get the Trump train off the tracks before more people get killed.