Signals that Donald Trump is losing his grip flash across our screens nearly every hour, but what arrived just the other day was new, different and historically significant. The moment occurred at a White House luncheon that was supposed to be private, and Trump's aides quickly attempted to hide the incriminating video of his remarks.

They were too late.

The president sounded at first as if he were merely discussing a disfavored federal program with White House budget director Russell Vought. "I said to Russell, 'Don't send any money for day care because the United States can't take care of day care.' That has to be up to a state. We can't take care of day care. We're a big country. We have 50 states. We have all these other people."

Those particular facts would in no way prevent the United States government from providing day care services for our children, at it has done for decades through Head Start and other programs. But Trump said he now wants to direct that program's relatively small cost to a purpose he deems more urgent.

"We're fighting wars," he continued. Or at least a war (which isn't going well). "We can't take care of day care. You got to let a state take care of day care, and they should pay for it too."

Not only is war a more compelling purpose for government spending than day care but — as Trump explained in a stunning departure from a century of public policy — he regards national defense to be in fact the only legitimate purpose of government.

"It's not possible for us to take care of day care, Medicaid, Medicare, all these individual things. They can do it on a state basis. You can't do it on a federal. We have to take care of one thing: military protection. We have to guard the country." He went on to express his disdain, never before stated so bluntly, for the popular and vital programs that he brushed aside as "all these little things, all these little scams that have taken place. ... You have to let states take care of them."

Never mind that states could not begin to raise the tax revenue required to finance Medicare, a federal budget item well north of $1 trillion annually and steadily rising as our population ages, let alone Medicaid too. Did Trump mean to suggest that the states should cover monthly Social Security checks too, the program that he and his billionaire henchman Elon Musk so brazenly undermined last year?

Already they have trashed and starved America's foreign aid infrastructure — causing the deaths of hundreds of thousands of innocent people who depended on U.S. food and medicine for survival — so maybe now he is keen to inflict such bloody mayhem on poor and elderly Americans.

We know that Trump is determined to squander more of our treasure — much, much more - on forever wars and other military boondoggles. Every day, he lights a match to at least a billion dollars over Iran, and he has proposed to raise the budget of his "Department of War" to $1.5 trillion, the highest level ever. That doesn't include the expected supplemental funding request of $200 billion for Iran, an "excursion" that is supposed to end in two or three weeks.

Why the United States needs to increase defense spending so abruptly by 40 percent remains unexplained. Perhaps it is because the president, obsessed with stamping his name everywhere, wants a fleet of new "Trump-class battleships." Perhaps it is because his tech donors want big wads of taxpayer cash for artificial intelligence weaponry, with all the obvious dangers of uncontrollable killing. Or perhaps it is because his two older sons, grifters extraordinaire like Dad, have invested in weapons manufacturing.

Whatever his rationale, the pain and deprivation to be inflicted by this "historic paradigm shift" in government are also becoming clear. Trump and Vought mean to pay for these shiny, deadly objects by slashing billions from domestic spending, just as he hinted over lunch last week. Capitulating to this budget can only encourage the aggression of a man who -- on Easter Sunday -- emitted a blasphemous threat of unlimited war crimes against the people of Iran.

His betrayal of the Iranian civillians he once pretended to protect mirrors his double-cross of American voters, which couldn't be more blatant or thorough. Trump is the president who promised no new wars, who swore to protect Medicare and Social Security, who vowed to balance the budget, and bring forth a "beautiful" health care system that would insure every American.

Does he understand that the war is submerging his approval in uncharted depths of public scorn? Is he even able to understand that his latest brutal proposals will only make voters despise him more?

Or does he believe that he will somehow rig the midterm elections and retain control by seizing elections away from the states?

He would not be the first autocrat to lose his mind before losing his power.

Joe Conason is founder and editor-in-chief of The National Memo. He is also editor-at-large of Type Investigations, a nonprofit investigative reporting organization formerly known as The Investigative Fund. His latest book is The Longest Con: How Grifters, Swindlers and Frauds Hijacked American Conservatism (St. Martin's Press, 2024). The paperback version, with a new Afterword, is now available wherever books are sold.