Donald Trump’s weekend bashing of a federal judge, and Monday’s attack of news organizations for supposedly sharing a hidden agenda with terrorists, goes way too far, and would seem out-there crazy if it weren’t also rather frightening.

Where to begin? Let’s hope that President Trump wasn’t aware of an imminent terror plot in his rush to slam down his refugee and travel ban. For if he was, his approach to the threat has backfired so horrendously it could be some time before his administration is able to reinstate it, or, hopefully, a more thought-out version.

Now that Judge James Robart rendered the travel and refugee order unenforceable, it is likely that the matter won’t be resolved until it makes it to a divided U.S. Supreme Court, where its chances could meet the futility of deadlock.

We hope Trump sees the error in his strategy. Even for the president of the United States, working to achieve on-the-ground results within our massive federal government takes skill, and some buy-in from those charged with making it so.

Trump’s order had none of that. Officials in all the relevant agencies knew too little about it until it went into effect. No wonder lawsuits resulted, and that one of them persuaded a judge to block the order.

Sadly, Trump doesn’t appear to have gotten the message. Just as he did on the campaign trail, when he insulted a judge by claiming his Mexican heritage disqualified him to rule in a case involving Trump University, Trump attacked Judge Robart.

“Just cannot believe a judge would put our country in such peril,” the president posted on Twitter on Sunday. “If something happens blame him and court system. People pouring in. Bad!”

Had the president stuck to defending his executive power, he would have been on solid ground. But surely it is outrageous to argue that, in making a ruling based on his review of the law, Robart deserves to be held accountable for any lawless action perpetrated from terrorists long sworn to harm Americans.

Then, on Monday, Trump told members of the military that news organizations have been intentionally covering up terror attacks, saying that “in many cases the very, very dishonest press doesn’t want to report it. They have their reasons, and you understand that.”

To back his assertion, Trump pointed to the exhaustively reported terror attacks in Paris and Nice.

American journalists have been killed reporting on terrorists. They’ve been beheaded. It would be impossible to calculate how many words have been written in the overall war-on-terror beat. To suggest that some kind of shared bias exists throughout American newsrooms so strong that it compels journalists to hide truth and thereby endanger the public is as dangerous as it is demonstrably untrue.

So, once again, Lying Trump takes the stage. When he can’t make the grade, he blames others. Doing so is a common enough human reaction to personal weakness, but to falsely suggest — based on the known evidence — that members of the judiciary and the press are somehow on the side of enemies of the state points to either a cracked mind, or something more sinister.

Americans shouldn’t buy what our president is selling. The truth is Trump botched what could have been a reasonable attempt to make the country safer. His mistakes gave our enemies a huge morale and recruiting boost. And his bashing of others is as unseemly as it is dishonest.

Increase Terror means increase media sales,