With Trump, there is always considerable question of who is "everybody" here, what are lies of a demented neofascist, and what is planned. Who is inside and who is outside, and who knows and who half-knows, and who is in on the con, who thinks they are in on the con but is actually not in the con—is being conned by being made to think they are in on the con when they are not—and who does not know that there is a con. It is not easy to untangle. And the principals can shift the narrative in a blink of an eye, as reversals are part of the game.

After spending twenty years making it impossible for anyone else to go to China, Nixon went to China and was then acclaimed as a Great Statesman, after all... -B.