Trump says what he likes about the BBC. But Epstein is his vulnerability

To confront Donald Trump is to engage in asymmetric warfare.

- Jonathan Freedland

It is to enter a battlefield that is not level, where he enjoys an advantage over those who would oppose him or merely hold him to account. That fact has cost Democrats over the past decade but it has now upended an institution central to Britain's national life: namely, the BBC.

The key asymmetry can be spelled out simply. Trump pays little or no regard to the conventional bounds of truth or honesty. His documented tally of false or misleading statements runs into the tens of thousands: the Washington Post registered 30,573 during Trump's first term in the White House, an average of 21 a day.

In a single interview with CBS's 60 Minutes earlier this month, Trump spoke falsely 18 times, according to CNN.

To hold him to account for this dishonesty is to cast yourself as an arbiter of truth, which creates the instant expectation that you yourself must be truthful. Here, then, is the asymmetry: he can lie, but his critics cannot.

So he can continue to tell the big lie, claiming against all evidence that he won the 2020 election, and myriad smaller lies, and, save for a few tireless factcheckers, no one cares. The response is a collective shrug, because it's Donald Trump. No one expects any better.