New York Times reporter Nick Confessore joined MSNBC’s Morning Joe on Wednesday and amid the wailing and hand-wringing over President Trump’s vitriolic speech at a rally in Phoenix on Tuesday, gave an alternative perspective on what Trump’s presidential purpose is.

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Willy Geist, the in-the-studio host while the increasingly remote or absent Joe and Mika can’t get their rears on set, asked Confessore to offer his alternate viewpoint on what lies behind the rise and continued support for Donald Trump in spite of everything.

“I think the assumption around the table is that the ultimate aspiration for any presidency is to pass policy. I think that’s wrong. I think his presidency is a theater of revenge and rage against enemies.

That is what he delivers to his constituents and those people at that rally. It’s not a trade policy. It’s not any policy. It’s the posture and the performance of punishing the people that they hate.

It’s dangerous and it’s toxic, but I’m not sure that it’s not what they don’t want to get. Which is totally unlike any past president. And, again, if your job is to pass tax reform, it’s not going to happen this way.

But if your job is to fuel that anger and to reflect it back to those people, he’s very, very good at that. Unfortunately for the country, I think.”

A plausible explanation in light of everything we’ve seen in the last two years. What remains to be seen is whether the schism Trump perpetuates is able to be reconciled, or if a reckoning between right and left decades in the making will ultimately come to a head.

If Confessore is correct, Trump’s administration could argue it’s been a success in the end.