Shit shots count if the table’s tilted

Michelle Goldberg’s column about Cambridge Analytica has a good punchline:

There’s a lesson here for our understanding of the Trump presidency. Trump and his lackeys have been waging their own sort of psychological warfare on the American majority that abhors them. On the one hand, they act like idiots. On the other, they won, which makes it seem as if they must possess some sort of occult genius. With each day, however, it’s clearer that the secret of Trump’s success is cheating. He, and those around him, don’t have to be better than their opponents because they’re willing to be so much worse.

Of course, as far as the election is concerned the willingness of other powerful actors to break the rules and the anti-democratic choices made by the framers were even more important. But the nihilism of the Trump campaign also reflects the governing method of both the Trump administration and its party.

If you missed it at the time, Jane Mayer’s piece on the Mercers is also essential.