‘I’m telling a terrible story

But it doesn’t diminish my glory’

• The Pirates of Penzance

Such press conferences as these do not have the purpose to convince. Sufficient store of stupidity or viciousness, of course, might allow for credulity in some listeners. For most of the rest of the world such official statements become new provocations, I-dare-you performances, the more absurd the better, to delight supporters in ostentatious displays of baroque bullshit like peacock feathers.