I should begin today by explaining that that headline comes from a Talking Heads song ("Making Flippy Floppy"), which was written during the years when Ronald Reagan was in the White House. It's kind of a nonsensical song and it's just one throwaway line; it wasn't trying to make some deeper point. Back then, liberals were constantly amused by pronouncements from the Gipper (such as: "trees cause more pollution than automobiles," to give just one hilarious example), so it was a common sentiment among his political opponents.

After watching the first few days of the Donald Trump administration, however, it seemed the most appropriate headline to go with. Because he hasn't exactly had a great start. Or to put it another way: there will be no "pivot" to a more-presidential Trump. He is who he is, and that's who he's going to be as president. And a big part of who he is is his worldview, which is often (as one of his spokespersons admitted this weekend), full of "alternative facts." Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer helpfully pointed out, in response: "There are no alternative facts. The alternative to fact is fiction."

Bearing the worst brunt of this reaction is Trump's new press secretary, Sean Spicer. Spicer was reportedly instructed to make his first official interaction with the press, on Saturday, a full-throated defense of the indefensible: Trump's inauguration celebration in D.C. was the biggest in all of recorded history, and the press was just being mean by not pointing it out. Well, no, it actually wasn't and they weren't. Scientists, when deciding what is fact and what is opinion, will talk about "falsifiability," or the concept that any given assertion can be proven false. If it is falsifiable, it is data worth examining. If not, it is either opinion or faith -- both of which are really beyond the purview of hard sciences. "When we die, X happens" is a good example of a non-falsifiable statement (no matter what you insert for X -- "reincarnation," or "we go to Heaven or Hell," or whatever...), because it is impossible to prove. Near-death experiences don't count -- nobody has ever died and verifiably come back from the dead to tell the rest of us what to expect, and I don't expect they ever will. So the statement is unprovable, one way or the other.

Trump's inauguration size being the biggest ever is a falsifiable piece of data. It's pretty easy to prove it false, in fact -- just look at a photo of the size of the crowd Obama got in 2009 (or even 2013) and compare it to a photo of last Friday down on the Mall. So why pick this particular fight when it's pretty obvious to anyone with any sense that Trump (and Spicer) staked out the losing side of the argument? Sorry, Sean (and Donald), but that's just not what 1.5 million people on the Mall look like.

Trump needs to get a lot better about picking his battles now that he's president, but so far he has shown an inability to listen to the counsel of others on which battle is even a winnable one for him. His ego demands respect from all -- whether earned or not -- and it will have its way no matter what anyone whispers in Trump's ear. Trump was convinced his inauguration was the biggest, so it must be so -- and everyone around him must forcefully defend this position. Period.

Spicer's performance on Saturday was followed up on Sunday by more statements from Team Trump, clarifying what he meant (in other words: pretzel-twisting Trump's beliefs to bear some slight resemblance to reality). Trump then teed up the next big egotistical rewriting of reality, telling members of Congress that between three and five million votes in the election were nothing short of voter fraud. Spicer was back out today for a press conference where he had to weakly insist that "the president believes this to be true," while backing away from actually defending the assertion as being true (he's learning). This will hopefully, in the future, help journalists classify Trump statements, differentiating between "actually true" and "just something Trump believes." It's the same filtering scientists do when deciding what is a faith-based statement and what could be proven factual in the real world.

Of course, misstatements and mistakes are always possible. Spicer made one today that I fully expect to see exploited by the late-night comics tonight, when he stated (in response to a question whether Trump would be meeting with the Congressional Black Caucus any time soon) that Trump had already met some civil rights leaders, including "Martin Luther King Junior." That'd be a pretty amazing feat, if true (and would indeed even move "what happens when we die" into the realm of falsifiability). Spicer obviously misspoke, even if he didn't realize it (even after someone in the audience yelled out "the third!"). Trump met with Martin Luther King III, the son of the famous civil rights leader. But Spicer, when presented with a video of his goof, can fully be expected to admit he erred. Whether Trump is capable of doing so -- even when caught in a similar slip of the tongue -- still remains to be seen.

There's been a lot of armchair psychoanalysis of Trump (ranging from "narcissistic" to "megalomaniacal") due to his absolute, unshakeable belief that his election was the most stupendous election in the annals of American history. Again, it was not. It was fairly impressive for a Republican in modern times, but that's about it. It was not, for instance, "a landslide," no matter how many Trump spokesfolk insist that it was. A truthful and verifiable statement on the size of Trump's electoral victory would be something like: "Donald Trump earned the biggest Electoral College victory of any Republican since George H. W. Bush." This is factual, because Trump could have even lost a few states and still won the election. He bested both George W. Bush's records, in other words. But he didn't best Obama's two elections -- not by a longshot. He didn't beat Bill Clinton's record, either. And he certainly didn't come close to Reagan's impressive landslides, or even the tally for the elder Bush. None of these facts matter to Trump -- in his mind, his presidential election was (at the very least) the most awesome since the time of Abraham Lincoln, and perhaps even the best since George Washington. That this is not in any way true does not bother him in the least, because he sees things the way he sees them, and nothing is going to change his opinion.

One certainly hopes that, with time, Trump will at least either grow a thicker skin (and not be so prone to attacking perceived slights) or have people around him aware enough of verifiable reality to counsel which fights are worth picking, and which are just flat-out losing battles. Presidents have a way of brushing things off that Trump really needs some practice in, to put this another way. If he continues to insist that his version of events is the correct one -- even in the face of overwhelming proof to the contrary -- then he's going to start losing support of Republicans (and the general public) who are now giving the new president the benefit of the doubt. When all doubt has been removed and Trump still insists up is down or black is white, all he'll be doing is confirming that he is incapable of realizing when falsification has actually happened for everyone else.

So far, this has all been in the realm of the petty. What Trump believes vis à vis his own inauguration or his own election isn't all that meaningful to how he leads the country in either foreign or domestic policy. It's personal, but it has no real ramifications beyond the personal. What will be much more concerning is if Trump ever exhibits this kind of behavior towards real-world facts that will have an impact on the rest of America. If Trump refuses to admit that the scope of a foreign crisis is what all his national security advisors insist it is or if Trump refuses to agree with budget projections (to throw out just two easy examples), then how Trump chooses to interpret reality and react will have much more far-reaching consequences.

At this point, the only thing I can state with certainty is that this will not be the last time I use this David Byrne quote as a headline over the next four years. My only hope is that saying: "Our president's crazy, did you hear what he said?" will continue to just be a punchline for late-night television comics to exploit, instead of becoming a downright terrifying statement to make. At this point, that seems like the best we can all hope for.

-- Chris Weigant

Follow Chris on Twitter: @ChrisWeigant