Feels like they’re not even trying to convince anyone, just provide a script to for friendly media to spoon-feed their most credulous and most cynical supporters.

I guess if they have a short, tidy little war then people will just kinda move on and forget about this, so it sort of works in that case. But if anything happens to cause sustained attention, this kinda bullshit will completely fall apart and wreck the credibility of everyone involved. And I feel like it’s already reaching that attention threshold just because Trump can’t resist making everything into a spectacle.