I’m willing to give the news some benefit of the doubt here because there actually are rational and non-evil reasons to do this.

I’m not. They’ve been bending the narrative with this wishy washy rhetoric so much recently that they need the backlash. Even if incompetence, it’s been an persistent pattern on their part. Trump is a fascist dictator, nothing he does is legally justified or anything near our old standard of “normal”, and yet they have been pretending that we still live in a stable world because they don’t want their interests threatened.

Also, this whole “they were post-adolescent” distinction is a waste of time. This shit is evil and anyone litigating nuance isn’t worth serious debate. It’s all delay tactics. Words are only tools to them.