Donald J. “Demagogue in Chief” Trump managed once again to inflame his political base with an assertion that he then contradicted in the very same sentence.

“Your Second Amendment rights are under siege, but they will never, ever be under siege as long as I am your president,” he said this week at the National Rifle Association annual conference in Dallas.

His speech was typically Trumpian in its lack of focus, its meandering course and the politically tinged remarks.

He went off on the economy, the “fake news” allegedly ignoring the good job growth and dwindling unemployment, the Robert Mueller probe into the “Russia thing.”

He did devote a bit of his rambling soliloquy to gun issues, which is why he was in Dallas in the first place. He said the NRA’s foes have laid siege to the Second Amendment, then said it wouldn’t happen as long as he is president.

Which is it, sir? Is it under siege or not?

The truth is this: There is no “siege” being waged against the Second Amendment. Sure, there are some Americans who want it repealed or significantly modified. Many other Americans, though, want to legislate remedies to the spasm of gun violence in this country without destroying the Second Amendment.

Poll after poll indicate that Americans favor some additional controls on gun purchases. Those polls do not suggest Americans want to limit “law-abiding” citizens’ constitutional rights to “keep and bear arms.”

Yet the president keeps yapping about some phony “siege” he says is being waged against the Second Amendment. That, I submit, is the rhetoric of a demagogue.

Perhaps it was just as well that Donald Trump devoted so little of his podium time in Dallas to gun issues, as it only would have exposed further the president’s stunning ability to speak out of both sides of his pie hole.