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THIS STORY IS SCORED

Laconic Granny

Kevin MacLeod · incompetech.com · CC BY 4.0

The logic here collapses on contact: the media is allegedly so crooked and so hostile that it delivered him a landslide, which would make it the most effective campaign operation in history. Note too the tell — the judge is a problem specifically because he once ruled for a reporter, and the remedy is not a better argument but an appeal, a grudge, and the word ‘access’ in scare quotes. A president does not get to define ‘decorum’ as a synonym for ‘coverage I like,’ and an Oval Office that can only be entered by the admiring is not a dignified office, just a closed one. When the pitch ends with a promise to do whatever is necessary, the reader is entitled to ask what that means, and to notice that no answer is offered.