Hillary Clinton just released a great new explainer about how she's going to cut childcare costs, Bernie Sanders is reaching out to Native Americans, and even Jill Stein (the Green Party candidate) is in the news with a Q&A on Reddit.

But instead, let's talk about Trump, because even though those guys are doing things that are important, Trump is the only one who's doing something fun.

Specifically, we've been granted another glimpse into the fascinating carnival of Trump's mind with an audio recording of someone who sure sounds like him claiming to be his spokesman so he can brag about how amazing Donald Trump is.

The recording dates back to 1991, when People reporter Sue Carswell called Trump for an article about his marriage to Ivana and his various other gossipy romances. She apparently recorded the call, and now for some reason she's given it to the Washington Post.

Just on its surface, these details are a little weird — why now, Sue? Why the Washington Post? She works for Vanity Fair these days, so why didn't she give it to them?

Ah, but whatever. This is the least crazy line of inquiry relating to the tape, which just sounds like a slightly more youthful version of Donald's unpleasantly unique voice and dialect. He introduces himself as "John Miller," and then dives into an intimate explanation of what a king among men Donald Trump is.

When confronted about it today, Trump says it wasn't him, which is a statement that's probably as true as anything else he says. The man on the tape speaks in a familiar style of meaningless nonsense-sentences, brags shamelessly, and can't resist calling everything "tremendous" and "great" and "beautiful."

This was apparently not an isolated incident. Reporters often received calls from a Trump confidant claiming to be "John Miller" or "John Barron." The concepts of Barons seem to have captivated Trump somewhat, as he referred to himself as "The Baron" when leaving messages for women, asked that a fictional character inspired by him be named "Barron," and named his son Barron.

When you listen to the recording of definitely-not-Donald, it's tempting to wonder, "What is he thinking?" And we'll never know for sure, because to get close to Donald's thought process is to stare deeply into an abyss.

But we can probably whip up some armchair-psychologist extrapolations. Most of us who've worked in office settings have, at some point, endured a Pretend-Baron Trump coworker: someone who brags constantly about things that were definitely not true, who demands praise despite accomplishing nothing, and who says whatever they think people around them want to hear.

I used to know with a person like that, and they made me unbearably sad. It was so clear that other people's opinions didn't matter to them — that in fact, they had zero interest in other people. They were only interested in their own opinion of themselves, and were only happy when self-praising to a captive audience in an endless awful loop. It wasn't enough for them to hang awards on the wall; they had to corner you and make up stories about their achievements.

This person once tried to brag of their knowledge of hydrology during the early days of California's drought, which was a mistake, as I am fascinated by water systems in the same way that other nerds collect train schedules. They made some offhand comment about water conservation being a stupid liberal plot, and I found myself consumed with a white-hot rage that resulted in a Julia-Sugarbaker-style monologue about the corrupt history of the Los Angeles sewer system.

It was, ultimately, a cautionary tale about what happens when two incompatible kinds of crazy intersect.

Anyway, this person's pattern of behavior continued for years, although they never went so far as to refer to themselves as a "Baron." I haven't spoken to that person in a long time, but I just looked them up. Everyone who knew them gleefully predicted that their career would be a colossal flameout, but they now run a large department at a major national organization.

I guess if you call enough people to sing your own praises, eventually you'll find enough people who believe you.