Trump, informed of leaked tapes blaming his war, says no regrets endorsing the man who made them.

…(cont) It held through October 1st. The president flew to Texas to campaign for Paxton regardless of the audio, and the campaign's answer to the tape was to keep moving: the convention stood amazing, the audio stood unheard, officially, while reporters kept asking.

It did not hold through the next recording, the one that left convention optics for arithmetic. Asked what was dragging his campaign, Paxton told donors it wasn't tariffs — "it's the war, it's gas prices, it's diesel." In a separate tape he said he didn't know what was behind some of the president's decisions. The Iran war Paxton had defended on the record was now, off the record, his own diagnosis for why he was losing — the same war, named twice.

By this week, a third such recording was circulating. His estranged wife's new ad for the ticket ran without once saying his name. His opponent went off the trail sick the day that tape dropped. The polling didn't care how amazing the convention was; gas prices don't read press releases, and diesel doesn't give a shit which war raised it.

Asked about all three tapes this time, the president didn't reach for "I haven't heard that." He reached past it: "No, no, no, not at all. He was a great attorney general. I think he'll be a great senator." Not ignorance. Indifference. The convention was amazing right up until the arithmetic came home as a fuel receipt; that is the malarkey this file closes.

"I Haven't Heard That" is preceded in death by the ignorance it pretended to, which its own party's tape disputes, and survived by a president who has heard the tapes and minds none of them.

In lieu of flowers, publish the number: what the Iran war added to a gallon of Texas diesel, so voters don't have to buy that figure secondhand from a fundraiser's tape.