Trump doesn’t fight losing battles. Remember when someone in his administration defunded the Special Olympics and the corporate media made it an outrage story for like a day and a half? What did Trump do? He immediately stepped in and reauthorized the funding. Now a guy like Rand Paul is so idiotic he would actually fight this battle with the media. For months he would go on TV and battle reporters in press conferences on why it was appropriate to defund the Special Olympics. And no matter how well he argued, he would always be losing. It’s a losing position. You look like an asshole defunding the Special Olympics. It’s a stupid thing to fight. So instead Trump quickly recognized it as a trap, saw that the funding was minimal compared to the full budget, and just - yoink - took away that talking point. Brilliant move. By the next day the media didn’t even talk about it because they no longer had an angle. Probably a lot of people here don’t even remember this “controversy”. But if Trump hadn’t done it, you would have. You would have heard about it every day for years. “Trump hates the physically handicapped!” Over and over and over again. It would have been exhausting and you yourself would have had to sit there at parties defending the defunding and explaining limited government and why this doesn’t mean you hate the handicapped and blah blah blah. Trump took all of that away.

Now stop and think about the President defending the storming of the Capitol. It’s a losing position. This is just one of those things that any President has to oppose, especially when we don’t control the media. The best move here is to neutralize the media’s talking points because that gives the Republican base and conservative media to stand by him. I understand why storming the Capitol is a legitimate form of protest, but I also understand what a difficult argument that is to make in Trump’s position, and with his platform. Think of it like this. Are there things you say here, anonymously, or at home, in private, that would not be appropriate to say in a professional forum? And if so, is that because you are a sellout or because you are just navigating modern society?

At the same time, I think it’s possible this video is a Deep Fake. It could be. But as a speech, I don’t think this is totally inconsistent with what Trump would say in this situation. It’s like Tapper wanting him to disavow David Duke. So apparently, if you look into David Duke, he isn’t even racist anymore. But would that be a good answer to that question when you are campaigning for office? Start defending David Duke? Would it even matter if you were right about him not being racist? All they want is that sound byte where you are defending David Duke and they will strip out all context and use it to smear you. And why? All to defend this one guy’s name on a technicality? It would be dumb. One of the great things about Trump is he pushes back where and when he needs to, but doesn’t go around chasing losing arguments that don’t even matter anyway.