On the one hand, you have to admire Donald Trump’s utter fearlessness in the face of a Leftmedia legion hell-bent on destroying him. What was it Mark Twain said about “the calm confidence of a Christian with four aces”? (That Twain didn’t mean it as a compliment is beside the point. When it comes to the media, Trump always believes he’s been dealt pocket rockets.)

But on the other hand, you might be inclined to ask: Why on earth, Mr. President, would you reward that dirty rat Jeffrey Goldberg with the ultimate “get”?

Goldberg, of course, is the Atlantic fabulist who first got our attention when he began peddling the widely debunked falsehood that Trump called our honored World War I dead “suckers” and “losers” and scrubbed a trip to France’s Aisne-Marne Cemetery because he thought the rain might mess up his hair. The immediate onslaught of more than 21 firsthand denials — including one from Trump-hating former National Security Advisor John Bolton — was head-snapping, and it should’ve sent Goldberg on a one-way trip to Palookaville, or wherever it is that hack journos wind up when they’ve been unequivocally exposed as frauds.

But Goldberg, like herpes, keeps coming back. Last month, he was the beneficiary of some egregious sloppiness on the part of Trump’s national security team, which inadvertently included him on a high-level Signal chat about the administration’s efforts to free up the Red Sea’s vital shipping lanes by liquidating Houthi terrorists there. That sloppiness was compounded by an unwillingness to take the “L” and move on to more important matters.

And for this, President Trump grants Goldberg an interview. Here’s how he explained it five days ago:

Later today I will be meeting with, of all people, Jeffrey Goldberg, the Editor of The Atlantic, and the person responsible for many fictional stories about me, including the made-up HOAX on “Suckers and Losers” and, SignalGate, something he was somewhat more “successful” with. Jeffrey is bringing with him Michael Scherer and Ashley Parker, not exactly pro-Trump writers, either, to put it mildly! The story they are writing, they have told my representatives, will be entitled, “The Most Consequential President of this Century.” I am doing this interview out of curiosity, and as a competition with myself, just to see if it’s possible for The Atlantic to be “truthful.” Are they capable of writing a fair story on “TRUMP”? The way I look at it, what can be so bad — I WON!

What this shows is that Trump likes being on offense. Just as he did with Bill Maher, he believes that his weapons-grade powers of persuasion can win over even his harshest critics, if he can only sit down and reason with them.

As for The Atlantic, the rag assembled a trio of lefties to match wits with Trump — Goldberg, Parker, and Scherer — and they sold the interview as all professional liars do: by lying. “We made our pitch,” they write, “which went like this: President Donald Trump, by virtue of winning a second term and so dramatically reshaping the country and the world, can now be considered the most consequential American leader of the 21st century, and we want to describe, in detail, how this came to be.”

Now compare this to what the treacherous trio apparently told Trump’s people: “The story they are writing … will be entitled, ‘The Most Consequential President of this Century.’”

Instead, the Atlantic headline reads: “I Run the Country and the World.” And the subhead reads: “Donald Trump believes he’s invincible. But the cracks are beginning to show.”

These people are scum.

Remember last year, just before the election, when Goldberg was peddling that Godwinian Trump-loves-Hitler garbage? This is more of the same.

Still, if this is Goldberg’s gotcha quote, it’s pretty weak sauce. It takes a dim-witted and ill-meaning audience to think that Trump considers himself The Dictator of the World. As CNN’s Scott Jennings explains it: “Regarding this idea that he runs the world, I mean, this phrase was coined, I think, in 1948, the president of United States is the leader of the free world. … There is no doubt that he, Donald Trump, as the president, is the leader of the free world, and we ought to all be rooting for his success, but I do think the secret sauce here is showing people that progress can be made in short order and it sounds like things are on deck.”

That dictatorial thread runs throughout the exhaustive piece, but, again, that dog no longer hunts. As columnist David Harsanyi put it: “Not only does Goldberg have unencumbered free speech rights, he can personally challenge the president in an interview without any concern for his safety or livelihood. This has to be the worst ‘age of autocracy’ ever.”