Yesterday, Donald Trump gave a speech in Manchester, NH.

During the speech, which was nearly lucid and rational by Trumpian standards, this happened:

Video: Trump sees a plane overhead, says "That could be a Mexican plane up there—they’re getting ready to attack." https://t.co/ryWXqnrMgx

— Bradd Jaffy (@BraddJaffy) June 30, 2016

“Mexico, and I respect Mexico, I respect their leaders, what they’ve done to us is incredible. Their leaders are so much smarter, so much sharper. And it’s incredible. In fact, that could be a Mexican plane up there — they’re getting ready to attack.”

This story has received breathless coverage in the left-leaning media. Most of the stories omit a critical fact: Trump was obviously making a joke. Obviously making a joke. The world isn’t going to end because of the joke, in fact, as jokes go it was pretty lame. Presidents have done a lot more edgy humor than that

And if you aren’t bright enough to see that the average Branch Trumpidian is going to look at your disdainful coverage of this nothingburger and say, “they did the same thing to Reagan,” then you really shouldn’t be covering politics.

I don’t think anyone will ever confuse me with a Donald Trump apologist but this kind of hipster, lack-of-perspective, history-began-in-1995 reporting makes you want to chew the furniture.

If you write for Huffington Post or Buzzfeed or TalkingPointsMemo and you read this, please, for the love of G–, don’t make me do this. Don’t make me defend Donald Trump. He does so much stupid sh** on a minute by minute basis that you could have a 24-hour Dumb Donald Trump Tricks channel and not run out of material. This is stupid. It makes you look stupid. And worse than that, it makes everyone who opposes Donald Trump look reflexively stupid because we sort of have to end up defending, much like a Trump surrogate, the stupid crap that you do.