Why do organizations continue to pretend anything Trump says is true? This bet was always only that these tariffs would benefit him personally by crashing the economy so that he could seize more power, and so far the first part is going swimmingly. Everybody knows that. AP certainly knows that. Why pretend otherwise?

The only thing I can figure is that a lot of news organizations think if they suck up to Trump now, then when he consolidates power he’ll kill them last. Which, in contrast, seems like a terrible bet.