During his opening monologue last night, Real Time host Bill Maher whacked Trump and his defender, chief of staff Gen. John Kelly, for the debacle following his "condolence call" to the widow of Sgt. La David Johnson earlier this week.

I am hesitant to say the president has hit a new low, because you’ll think it’s a repeat. No, it's October 20th, 2017, a week for the history books, also for the books about abnormal psychology.

So here's what America was debating about this week. On Monday, Trump called the pregnant widow of a dead American soldier to console her and wound up pouring salt in the wound and feuding with her all week.

“Who knew empathy was so complicated?” I mean, if you could take a week where it was revealed that Harvey Weinstein sexually assaulted every single female in show business and still be the worst fat, gross creep, that’s pretty good.

And you know, all of this came about because of the same Trump pattern, bluff, lie, attack, because, you know, he doesn't know anything. So when he's asked about something, he's got to bluff. And then when they call him on the bluff, he lies. And then when they call him on the lie, he attacks. So this is exactly what happened.

Three weeks ago, four of our Green Berets were killed in the African country of Niger and Trump didn’t say anything for two weeks. But someone put him on the spot about it last week, so he bluffed and said, “I wrote them letters.”

Of course he didn’t. He probably didn’t even know about them because they didn’t do anything that could get on his radar, like kneel at a football game. […]

But then he says, forget the letters, I was just waiting for the right time to call, which in the case of the widow of Sgt. La David Johnson, turned out to be when she was in the car, going to the airport to accept the body. This is when Trump thinks it is a good time to say to her “He knew what he signed up for.”

Somewhere Rex Tillerson is saying, “I told you he was a moron.”

And then Trump drags Gen. John Kelly, his chief of staff into this, because Kelly's own son was killed in Afghanistan, and “Obama never called.”

So he sends out Kelly yesterday to defend his own inept call and stupid lies and I feel bad for Gen. Kelly having to defend this vile nincompoop. On the other hand, he knew what he signed up for.

Now look, I know Gen. Kelly is the only thing that stands between us and WWIII, but this was not his finest hour. He spent a lot of time smearing this Congresswoman who was in the car, doing her job, and she was a friend, supporting the widow, when Trump's call came in.

So Kelly does what Republicans always do. They invent new rules. I thought I had new rules. No, they have new rules, like you know, if you criticize the president overseas, it insults the troops. […]

So, he invents a new rule. A phone call from a president to a widow is sacred, and if it comes on a speaker phone, you can't listen in. First of all, she wasn't “listening in,” She didn't tap the woman's phone. She happened to be in the car.

And also, what kind of cretin in the whole history of the world has ever had to deny something he said during a condolence call?!

So then General Kell laments a short list of things that would always, in his youth, he said he always thought would be sacred, but no longer are. And he says “women, Gold Star families, above all, this is what we should hold sacred,” women and Gold Star families, “Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to go back to defending my boss, the pussy-grabber who insults war widows.” Really?

And it actually gets worse. Because of this subject coming up we found out this week that back in June, Trump was on a condolence call to a father of someone who died and apparently was so moved by his plight, he said “I'm going to do what no president has ever done. I'm going to write you a personal check for $25,000.”

And then never sent it, or what he calls, the art of the deal.