I’m sure Donald Trump will claim later today or tomorrow that he was joshing around when he suggested that some gun nut could put a bullet into Hillary Clinton if and when she becomes President, but he did say that. He was speaking in that free-associative swaggering style of his, but come on. The man is venal. A N.Y. Times commenter named Dennis posted the following around 2:15 pm Pacific: “I’ve noticed that this is a recurring rhetorical technique employed by Trump: say something that at first blush seems incendiary on its face, followed immediately by pulling his punch with a disingenuous ‘I don’t know’ — upon which the dog-whistle crowd goes nuts. Then, after the media picks it up, the campaign offers up an ‘alternative’ explanation for the remarks that is the picture of innocence, but has little to nothing to do with what he implied or his audience actually heard.”