When Karoline Leavitt says that the writings of the man who tried to shoot up the Correspondents’ Dinner are “indistinguishable” from what reporters say every day — what, exactly, is she claiming? That asking whether the president of the United States meets the constitutional bar for office is the same as picking up a rifle? That noting, accurately, that the president was found liable for sexual abuse, convicted on 34 felony counts in New York, and found by multiple federal courts to have engaged in self-dealing through his business empire — that saying these things out loud is the moral equivalent of an attempted assassination? This is the trick, and it needs to be named: the administration is trying to launder Trump’s documented record into a kind of unspeakable fact. The argument is not that the press has gotten its reporting wrong. The argument is that the press should stop reporting it, because the reporting is what is dangerous.

The defense secretary used a biblical reference to rebut allegations of food shortages.