Fair warning: I’m about to be naive again. Here goes: Why don’t politicians — in both parties, and across all of our institutions — just come out and say “I screwed up” when it’s perfectly obvious that they screwed up? If the last couple of decades are any indication, our eminent leaders seem to be under the impression that admitting error is about the worst thing that you can do. In most cases, though, it’s really not. In the real world, acknowledging that you tried something and that it didn’t work — or, simply, that you made a flat-out mistake — is quite relatable. And, even when it’s not relatable, it’s preferable to telling stupid lies that — and here’s the key point — that everyone knows are stupid lies.

Right now, the Trump administration and its apologists are applying the most hilarious spin to the news that the editor of the Atlantic, Jeffrey Goldberg, was added to a Signal group chat in which the Secretary of Defense, the national security advisor, the vice president and others were discussing their plan to hit the Houthis. Indeed, as recently as today, the Atlantic‘s report — the veracity of which has been acknowledged by the White House — has been described as a “hoax.” Who, I must ask, is this line for?

That’s a rhetorical question. I know the answer, and the answer is dumb. The line is for people who already defend the Trump administration whatever it does, and for no-one else besides. Naturally, those people are happily playing along on the Internet, deploying their usual mix of attempted distraction (“but Jeffrey Goldberg hates Trump!”), performative indignation (“the media is trying to destroy the government!”), and cynical triangulation (“look at those WEAK figures on the right who are saying that this was a screw-up — I’m not like them — so subscribe, donate, and smash that like button!”). As far as I can see, though, everyone else in the world thinks that those people are pretty silly. Contrary to the rhetoric that always attends this sort of contretemps, this isn’t actually a matter of fighting back against lies, or standing up for a controversial policy against its naysayers, or defending a critical institution against the mob. This is a case of pretending that what is obviously true is not, in fact, true, and hoping that the broader electorate is as invested in the deceit as is the president’s base.

Well, they’re not. And they never will be. Joe Biden tried to wave away the Afghanistan disaster. It didn’t work. He tried to ignore, or to downplay, inflation. It didn’t work. He tried to cover up his senility. It didn’t work. When he did these things, his sycophants obediently played along in exactly the same way as Trump’s sycophants are obediently playing along now. But they sounded ridiculous, and the public sensed that. It didn’t work. It never works. It never will.

This is not a good news cycle for the president, and it was never going to be a good news cycle for the president. But it could have been less bad if the White House had simply a) said, “this was a mistake, and we are taking steps to make sure it doesn’t happen again”; b) pivoted to the fact that the outcome of the strikes in question was positive; and c) having done all that, taken aim at some of the predictable hyperbole from the press (the Atlantic is now casting any criticisms of it as an attack on the First Amendment itself) while presenting themselves as the reasonable, in imperfect, players in the arena. This is amoral advice, and, by offering it, I do not intend to downplay how serious this error was. Analytically, however, I simply do not believe that the public is likely to fixate on it for too long. Generally speaking, once someone has acknowledged that he made a mistake, it is those who keep harping on the issue, rather than those who admitted fault, who look like the zealots. With one sentence, the White House could have altered the landscape.

It didn’t, though, and now we are destined to litigate it for days, with each stupid attempt at spin yielding its own inquiries, rebuttals, defenses and so on. Picking your battles is important. Occasionally, that requires contrition — even if you happen to loathe the people who are offering the stinging critique.