Wow ToysIf there’s one trope of the Trump years that we can definitively retire now, it’s the idea that the president is constantly winning some 13-dimensional chess game devoted to distracting us from unflattering stories. Where a more adept politician would be trying to change the subject from the Russia probe, Donald Trump just can’t help drawing attention to the very subject he wants people to ignore.

When Sally Yates and James Clapper testified to the Senate subcommittee investigating Russia’s alleged interference in last year’s election, another president might have chosen that moment to unveil a major policy initiative—or, if he didn’t have any initiatives handy, to hold a photo op with some girl scouts. At the very least, he would have tried not to talk about the story. Instead Trump ran to Twitter to insinuate that Yates had leaked classified information, a tweet that amplified rather than disrupted the day’s event. Then he plastered a message onto his Twitter banner declaring that Clapper had “reiterated what everybody, including the fake media already knows- there is ‘no evidence’ of collusion w/ Russia and Trump.” This was widely derided for misrepresenting what Clapper had said, but from a PR perspective it did something even more unforgivable than lying: It ensured that the first thing anyone visiting Trump’s Twitter page would see would be a reference to the Russia accusations.