President Donald Trump arrived at the United Nations on Tuesday and delivered the sort of spectacle that Americans have come to expect from him. The performance mixed threats, peculiar declarations, and a fresh complaint about a news organization that was still doing its job.

Trump mused about annihilating Iran before asking the assembled diplomats, “Do I drive them into hell?” He also called Cuba a “failed state,” prompting officials from that country to walk out.

Then came another characteristically odd proclamation. Trump declared that he was renaming artificial intelligence “super intelligence,” giving the gathered diplomats a close view of the rambling performance regularly inflicted upon audiences in the United States.

Yet Trump’s saber rattling and strange pronouncements were not the only spectacle. The president was also furious that CNN, one of the news organizations he banned from covering him at the White House, was somehow still covering him at the United Nations.

Trump aired his grievance directly to CNN’s Kaitlan Collins. Apparently, the president expected his White House decision to follow CNN around the planet, even into an institution that controls its own press credentials.

“It’s an honor to be here. I’m surprised that CNN is here covering me. You shouldn’t be here, you should not—you should not be here covering me, you said you weren’t going to cover me. You shouldn’t be covering me,” Trump told Collins.

The complaint had the familiar rhythm of a toddler insisting that somebody had violated rules existing only in his own imagination. Trump sounded particularly aggrieved by his claim that CNN had said it would stop covering him.

That was not what happened. CNN never said it would no longer cover the president, while Trump was the one who blocked the network from its White House assignment and its ability to serve in the White House press pool.

Even if banning CNN, MS NOW, and Politico from White House coverage were legitimate, such a restriction would apply only to the White House. It would not force the United Nations or any other separate organization to adopt Trump’s grievance and deny credentials to those outlets.

The United Nations is an entirely separate body, and it can issue press credentials to the organizations it chooses. Trump’s apparent confusion over that basic separation left him mystified and angry that CNN could still show up and report on him.

Collins later had to explain on air that CNN was not at the United Nations as part of the White House pool. The network was covering the president through access that did not depend upon Trump’s approval.

“Since technically CNN should be serving as the pool representatives with the president today, but given he removed us from our assignment and our ability to be able to do so, we are not traveling with the president here to the United Nations,” Collins said.

That distinction appears to be the part Trump could not grasp. Removing CNN from an assignment controlled by the White House did not erase the network, terminate its coverage, or require the rest of the world to pretend the organization no longer existed.

Trump may want coverage that resembles Trump TV, an endless collection of flattering clips presenting his supposed greatest hits. He can attempt to tightly control media access at the White House or on related grounds, but he does not control access granted by the United Nations.

The episode exposed the absurd reach of Trump’s expectations. He treated his own decision as if it were a global decree, then complained when an independent institution failed to protect him from reporters he did not want nearby.

The world outside Trump’s immediate control remains free to make its own decisions, including the basic decision to credential CNN. His United Nations tantrum could not change that reality, no matter how many times he insisted Collins should not have been there.

Trump’s fury ultimately rested on a simple reversal of the facts presented in the article. CNN did not refuse to cover him, while Trump removed CNN from its White House assignment and then acted shocked when the network found another legitimate way to report.