No single incident can holistically sum up the sheer derangement and utter absurdity that has characterized cable news punditry during the Trump era. But in pondering the phenomenon, one particularly emblematic moment comes to mind: namely a December 2015 appearance on Tucker Carlson by Newsweek journalist Kurt Eichenwald.

Eichenwald, who is probably best known to the Twitterverse for accidentally tweeting out his own tentacle-themed search history, was then a highly visible member of the burgeoning anti-Trump pundit brigade and had recently made the rather incendiary claim that the Republican front-runner had been “institutionalized in a mental hospital for a nervous breakdown in 1990.” The details of said claim (Eichenwald, as far as I can tell, never offered even a shred of evidence that it was true) ultimately matter less than the histrionics that followed.

Challenged repeatedly by Carlson, whose own agenda was obviously to pantomime a paint-by-the-numbers conservative complaint about liberal media bias, Eichenwald obfuscated for over seven minutes while insisting with increasing absurdity that he was being prevented by the host from substantiating his claim — in the process making use of a prop he’d prepared in advance (a binder emblazoned with the words “Tucker Carlson Falsehoods” printed in oversized Arial font). Several minutes in, Eichenwald’s filibustering act had become so blatant that a visibly gleeful Carlson proclaimed, “This is performance art! I’ve never had an interview like this in my life!”