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THIS STORY IS SCORED

Comic Hero

Kevin MacLeod · incompetech.com · CC BY 4.0

The theory of the case is that a country making cars is itself evidence of a crime, which would come as news to every country that makes cars. Notice the structure: a grievance about milk expands into a grievance about automobiles, then into a fifty-billion-dollar procurement decision issued in the same breath and the same font as the insult nickname. Directing an agency to strip a nation's goods from federal schedules is the kind of thing that used to arrive with a legal citation attached; here it arrives with a thank-you note. The signature at the bottom is the tell — a man announcing policy on a website still feels obliged to remind everyone which office he holds.