I think Trump’s sudden lurch into rational skepticism at a socially inappropriate moment is hilarious, but I’m not going to pretend the whole “don’t tell the kids Santa is a story” routine makes any sense.

What’s the point of telling one’s children a lie that you know they’ll find out is a lie long before they’re out of childhood? Why not just tell them it’s a story? Adults don’t tell children pumpkins are the personified Spirit of Halloween, so what’s with all the “Shh shh don’t spill the beans” silliness? Apart from anything else I don’t see why parents would want to give their children reason to think Mommy and Daddy make a habit of lying to them.

Like so:

Hey, kids under 8 years old, thanks for reading The New York Times. But this time, please don’t. Maybe go play Minecraft or something instead.

… O.K., are they gone now? Cool. Here’s what President Trump said to a child about Santa Claus on Monday.

Jokey [as if kids under 8 read the Times!] but still referring to a real taboo. What Trump did is hilarious because of the taboo.

Sadly, we do not know how the 7-year-old, named Coleman, responded to the president of the United States’ suggestion that his parents had been lying to him all his life and that he would probably get wise to it soon. The president made the comments from the White House while he and the first lady, Melania Trump, fielded calls from a hotline for children wondering where Santa was.

Mr. Trump’s faux pas was roundly mocked on social media, where he was criticized for breaking the covenant in which we have all agreed to deceive our children.

Exactly; why has everyone agreed to do that? It’s kind of a bully move, and I remember being annoyed about it when I was a child.

I’m with Katha on this.

https://twitter.com/KathaPollitt/status/1077414771065004033

Claire McCaskill tells us what we already suspect – Senate Republicans know Trump is many cards short of a deck but they keep shtum because Republicans.

In the interview, the blunt-speaking Missouri Democrat, reflecting on her election loss to Republican Josh Hawley — a political novice whom she also referred to as a “bright shining object” — also didn’t mince words for the Republican Party.

While she warned that history “will judge some of my colleagues harshly that they didn’t stand up to this President at some of the moments where he has been unhinged about particularly the rule of law,” she also said that GOP senators have privately conceded they can’t speak out against Trump because of backlash they’d receive from their base.

“Now they’ll tell you, if it’s just the two of you, ‘The guy is nuts, he doesn’t have a grasp of the issues, he’s making rash decisions, he’s not listening to people who know the subject matter,’ ” she said. “But in public if they go after him … they know they get a primary, and they know that’s tough.”

So it’s all about them, and not the good of a country of 327 million people. “Gee, I don’t know, Marv, which is it gonna be, the welfare of 327 people plus to a considerable extent the rest of the 7 billion on the planet, or…me? Tough choice but I’m gonna hafta go with me, because me. Me and my job. That’s the important thing here.”

We knew this, but that doesn’t make it any less disgusting.

Obama’s national security adviser Susan Rice in the Times yesterday:

This country’s national security decision-making process is more broken than at any time since the National Security Act became law in 1947. Nothing illustrates this dangerous dysfunction more starkly than President Trump’s reckless, unilateral decisions to announce the sudden withdrawal of all 2,000 United States troops from Syria and to remove 7,000 from Afghanistan.

These decisions went against the advice of the president’s top advisers, blindsided our allies and Congress, and delivered early Christmas presents to our adversaries from Russia and Iran to Hezbollah and the Taliban. The costs of this chaos are enormous, starting with the blunt, unnerving resignation of Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, one of the last senior administration officials committed to preserving American global leadership and alliances.

…

Cutting and running from Syria benefits only militants, Turkey, President Bashar al-Assad of Syria, Russia and Iran. We are abandoning our Kurdish partners, leaving them vulnerable to Turkey’s offensive, after they did the hard work of undermining the Islamic State.

But Turkey, Russia and Iran are going to be our new best friends. Aren’t they?

The near simultaneous order to withdraw half of the American troops in Afghanistan shocked our NATO allies, who have served alongside United States forces since Sept. 11, and shook the Afghan government in advance of precarious presidential elections next year. This arbitrary and precipitous withdrawal will strengthen the Taliban and undermine diplomatic efforts to jump-start reconciliation talks, while opening the field to greater Russian and Chinese influence.

But it will save money, which we can spend on Wall.

If our national security decision-making process were even minimally functional, there would have been a carefully devised plan to execute moves, including wrongheaded ones. The plan would have included strategies for mitigating risks to our partners on the battlefield and to friendly governments; advance consultations with allies; briefings of Congress; and a press strategy.

One reason our national security decision-making process is not minimally functional is because Bolton doesn’t talk to people and is always flying off somewhere instead of sticking around to talk to people.

The other, of course, is Mister Shit-for-brains.

The president couldn’t care less about facts, intelligence, military analysis or the national interest. He refuses to take seriously the views of his advisers, announces decisions on impulse, and disregards the consequences of his actions. In abandoning the role of a responsible commander in chief, Mr. Trump today does more to undermine American national security than any foreign adversary. Yet no Republican in Congress is willing to do more than bleat or tweet concerns.

Happy holidays.

https://twitter.com/waltshaub/status/1077309430084059137

Once again Peter Tatchell steps in to patronize women and tell us how to do better.

Martina #Navratilova tweets (& then deletes) rant about #trans athletes She promises to educate herself. Her tweet was wrong but she's apologised. Plus one misguided tweet does not cancel out her decades of equality activism. Time to forgive & move on https://t.co/twOuT4KISq

— Peter Tatchell (@PeterTatchell) December 23, 2018

There was no “rant.” She doesn’t need to “educate herself” (Peter Tatchell, on the other hand…). Her tweet was not wrong and she shouldn’t have to apologize. Her tweet was not “misguided” and she doesn’t need to be “forgiven” by Peter Tatchell.

https://twitter.com/Jessie_XL/status/1077000297640349696

https://twitter.com/Jsoosty/status/1076990940236132353

https://twitter.com/Leadinglady0609/status/1076942116708904961

I scrolled through the replies for a long time and didn’t find a single one that wasn’t a variation on these.