More than it's anything else, an American presidential election is a TV series. And all the available evidence appears to show that the nation is ready to change the channel.

To put it bluntly, The Trump Show has worn people out.

Pretty much like "The Apprentice" eventually did. That's the scripted "reality TV" show in which Trump portrayed a brilliant business tycoon, despite his real-world history of multiple bankruptcies and tax fraud convictions. Naive viewers bought the hype, just as many of the same people mistake professional wrestling for a real sport.

(His own involvement in WWE wrestling taught Trump a great deal about the fathomless gullibility of a large segment of the public.)

So anyway, what it's come down to, in TV terms, is a beautiful, highly intelligent woman with a killer smile versus a grumpy old braggart who actually boasted that he's better looking than she is — among the silliest of his many absurd claims. On a real sitcom, it would play with a prerecorded laugh track. Even Ted Baxter, the pompous anchorman on "The Mary Tyler Moore Show," wouldn't have said anything so fatuous.

Technically, Harris is an incumbent. But it doesn't feel that way. It feels as if The Trump Show has been looming over American politics since 2016, and most normal people are sick and tired of it. The boasting, the whining, the witless name-calling — "Little George Slopadopoulous," for heaven's sake — and the never-ending lies.

Here's something the candidate told the Junior Anti-Sex League just last week. OK, that's stolen from Orwell's "1984." Trump actually spoke to Moms For Liberty, an organization of suburban book-banners. "Emotional support cougars," somebody has called them.

"The transgender thing is incredible," Trump said. "Think of it. Your kid goes to school and comes home a few days later with an operation. The school decides what's going to happen with your child and you know many of these childs [sic] 15 years later say, 'What the hell happened? Who did this to me?' They say, 'Who did this to me?' It's incredible."

Actually, it's worse than incredible. It's insane. Downright psychotic. In the real world, people are sent to psychiatric wards for expressing such delusions. Except that few think the former president actually believes that gender-reassignment surgery is being forced upon American children in public schools. It's just Trump being Trump.

But what if he does believe it? He also told the "Moms" group that in blue states, newborn infants are put to death by doctors as an abortion method. How crazy is that?

Oddly, the New York Times covered the gathering without quoting either pronouncement. The rest of the "mainstream" media pretty much followed along. True, the Times ran a story with this headline: "Trump Keeps Turning Up the Dial on Vulgarity. Will He Alienate the Voters He Needs?"

But editors buried it: The article ran in the Saturday paper on page A12, as Bob Somerby noted at his Daily Howler website.

True, the Times report did mention the photo of Hillary Clinton and Kamala Harris that Trump posted on his Truth Social website referencing "blowjobs" as crucial to their respective careers. Is that vulgar enough for the very holy Moms For Liberty?

No mention of the hallucinatory claims, however. After months of stories devoted to Joe Biden's age, cognition, supposed gaffes and fitness to serve, the national press now covers the race between Harris and Trump as if it were a normal presidential campaign with normal candidates. Bush vs. Gore, say.

Horse-race coverage, it's called, with updates about rallies, swing states, opinion polls and the like. The collective unwillingness of our esteemed national news media to cope with the reality of the Trump campaign constitutes a profound failure of responsibility -- an elaborate game of "let's pretend."

We're not supposed to notice that one of the horses has thrown its jockey and is running loose on the track.

So it falls to Harris herself. Only she — and, to a lesser extent, Tim Walz — can deal with this madness in a way that can force the news media to report it and the great lowing herd of "low-information voters" to absorb it.

On the campaign trail, the Democratic nominee boasts that as a prosecutor, she convicted fraudsters and sex offenders of all kinds. So she knows Trump's type.

But can she say it to his face and make it stick?

Maybe, assuming that Trump actually shows up for their scheduled debate next week. For all his calling the vice president a slut and a communist — "Comrade Kamala," indeed — the two have never actually met. Never been in the same room together, apparently.

But Harris has long dealt with bullies and delusional people of every description. At this point, the contest is hers to lose.

The Trump Show is past ready to be canceled.

eugenelyons2@yahoo.com