How did a truthbomb like this end up being casually dropped by, of all people, Joy Behar?

And since when does she have the presence of mind to connect the Covington Catholic clusterfark to the other recent case of anti-Trump wishcasting, BuzzFeed’s Michael Cohen story?

God love ‘er for betraying no shame in recognizing that the proposition that All MAGA Hat-Wearers Are Bad in this case seems to require the continued pummeling of a bunch of children. And I stress “continued.” I jumped to conclusions too when the first carefully edited clip of the confrontation emerged but it’s one thing to render judgment rashly and regret it and another to double and triple down after evidence to the contrary emerges, as some of the Lords of Tolerance have done over the past 48 hours. David French noticed too:

[W]hen you are found to be wrong, when snap judgments go awry, the proper response is to apologize (as some of my colleagues have done). We’re human. We make mistakes. The proper response is not to double down in digging for dirt, hoping and praying that you’ll find some reason to justify your initial rage. When activists and partisans do that, they send a clear message to their opponents: They will destroy you if they can. That’s the message that sent a shudder up the spine of husbands and wives during the Kavanaugh hearings. That’s the message that sends a shudder up the spine of moms and dads as we watch men and women try to ruin the Covington Catholic kids. This isn’t just a media scandal. When we see the hate, some of us see our sons, and we know that in America today, their futures, their reputations, and – given the prevalence of death threats – perhaps even their very lives are in the hands of an angry mob.

Follow some of the replies to this tweet to see what he means:

Sitting down with Nicholas Sandmann – the student at the center of the protest controversy at the Lincoln Memorial. Airs tomorrow on @TODAYshow pic.twitter.com/oSb8ljunQN — Savannah Guthrie (@SavannahGuthrie) January 22, 2019

The instinct to double down on a snap judgment is understandable, if not excusable, as basic psychology. People don’t like admitting when they’re wrong, especially about something that confirms so many of their most deeply held priors: Trump supporters, or white kids generally, are capital-B Bad, therefore it must and can only be that they were in the wrong in a confrontation with a Native American activist. But not all of this is due to cognitive dissonance. I think some of the doubling down is a deliberate strategy. If you want to marginalize the Bad People then the original narrative of the confrontation must prevail, whatever the evidence says. Keep pushing it. Hope that the sheer cumulative force behind the assertion carries it to widespread acceptance despite all evidence to the contrary. It works, you know. It’s happened before.

Laura Ingraham reported earlier today that the White House had invited some of the Covington kids to meet with Trump. That’s now being walked back:

EXCLUSIVE on the new #LauraIngrahamPodcast — the Covington Catholic students threatened by the leftist internet mob will be meeting with @realDonaldTrump at the White House as early as tomorrow. @iTunes @PodcastOne — Laura Ingraham (@IngrahamAngle) January 22, 2019

Senior WH official tells us that the reporting is inaccurate.The Covington Kids have not been invited. Senior WH aide says: “They are not coming tomorrow, they are not coming this week, that does not mean they are not going to come at all? I don’t know.” Says nothing is imminent. https://t.co/a5hGkSf4ar — Fin Gomez (@finnygo) January 22, 2019

My thought last night was that the last thing this clusterfark needed was Trump weighing in. Every controversy he touches turns more bitter; God knows what he might say about it off the cuff to damage his own side; and it’s a bad look for him to be taking time out for something like this when the government’s shut down and federal workers are looking at another missed payday. The right has done quite well without him over the last few days prosecuting the case in the kids’ defense too, with help from Fox News. The more I think about it, though, the weirder it would be if he *didn’t* weigh in. This sort of cultural brawl is why he was elected, after all. Ann Coulter has convinced herself that it was because of the wall, but no, it’s because Trump is willing to grab the left in a headlock unapologetically whenever a nasty bar fight like this breaks out. Fans will forgive him sooner or later (spoiler: sooner) if he doesn’t get a wall but Trump refusing to throw a chair at SJWs trying to smear a bunch of kids for “the cause” really would be a “Why did we elect this guy?” moment.