“As is often the case with recent ‘cheap fake’ stories,” the Daily Beast wrote of the fundraiser’s aftermath, “the Republican National Committee first posted a misleading clip to its RNC Research account on X that cut most of the lead-up to the seemingly innocuous moment.”

So much for all that. In one swift motion, a Hollywood celebrity decimated a dubious White House communications strategy its willing abettors knew to be false. Democratic lawmakers, media professionals, and the president’s staff, above all, should not have put themselves in a position in which the whole enterprise rested on the willingness of the famous to subordinate their consciences to their political objectives. The minute the prospect of electoral success was foreclosed, their consciences seem to have taken priority.