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THIS STORY IS SCORED

Super Polka

Kevin MacLeod · incompetech.com · CC BY 4.0

A man secure in his own recollection does not need a footnoted brief, a corroborating witness, a bundle of attached clips and a rhyming insult for a reporter's surname. The tell is the pileup: he simultaneously argues that nobody speaks at the ceremony, that he never asked to speak, and that he wouldn't have wanted to speak even if he could — three alibis where one truth would do. Then comes the line about winning three presidential elections, which is the kind of claim that quietly cancels the credibility of everything stacked above it. The demand for a retraction arrives, as ever, from a man who has never issued one.