"Trump's Razor": a useful tool for deciphering Trump's actions through which assuming either 1) corruption, or 2) stupidity usually yields the correct explanation.

We're at a point in our national life where it's essential to establish whether you're dealing with a good-faith actor FIRST before moving forward. Granting good-faith status to anyone with a history of supporting Donald Trump is insane, given the deficits of truthfulness that support demands.

The fact that this repulsive character is their "communications" director is indicative of how far this country has fallen. In a sane world, the height of his professional accomplishment would be employment as a bouncer at a sleazy night club.

Of course they were fooled; he's been so subtle about it...

Prescott was basically repeating an argument Trump apologists have been using since 2021, claiming that a stray sentence in which he used the words "peacefully and patriotically" somehow defined the context he set for his speech. It's BS, a cynical attempt to rewrite history.

I knew these allegations were BS from the start, perhaps because 1) I'm an American, and 2) I've heard all the verbal contortions Trump apologists have deployed to justify his actions on that day. Claiming that his "peacefully and patriotically" comments were context-setting is their favorite.

These jackasses enjoy believing that a lack of financial resources is due to a lack of virtue, ignoring the fact that America routinely performs poorly in global rankings of social mobility. We're the wealthiest country in the world, yet our economy works poorly for wide swathes of the population.

Sadly, the internet has completely changed the incentive structure for being truthful. Amidst the cacophony of competing voices, the most provocative generate the most attention, accruing a bizarre "wisdom" of the crowd-like credibility. The rewards for political lying have increased exponentially.

For culture (and in general), I'd take London over New York every day of the week.

I don't buy the idea that the BBC's edit was misleading. Trump's "speeches" consists of piles of incoherent word salad in which he's contradicting himself repeatedly. To grant him plausible deniability for including a single qualifying sentence within a hailstorm inflammatory exhortation is absurd.

They privatize the profits and socialize the risks. The hypocrisy doesn't concern them at all; in fact, they consider the pursuit of their narrow self-interests to be a prevailing virtue.