Vox Sentences: Donald Trump vs. the circular firing squad

How many Donalds Trump are there? Enough to keep his (their?) opponents in disarray.

Vox Sentences is written by Dylan Matthews and Dara Lind.

TOP NEWS

The two Donalds Trump

Joe Raedle/Getty Images

• Donald Trump held a rally in St. Louis today. At least one protester was escorted, bleeding, from the rally.

  [Mashable / Megan Specia]

• Here is what Trump said at that rally: "Part of the problem and part of the reason it takes so long [to kick them out] is nobody wants to hurt each other anymore."

  [Politico / Nick Gass]

• Trump at Thursday's CNN debate, when asked about violence: "There is some anger. There's also great love for the country. It's a beautiful thing in many respects."

  [Vox / Dara Lind]

• Trump Friday morning, when asked about violence at rallies: "I thought it was very, very appropriate."

  [ThinkProgress / Aaron Rupar]

• But Ben Carson, who endorsed Trump this morning, would like those protesters to know that the Donald Trump who incited violence against them is not the real Trump. The real Trump is apparently much nicer.

  [Vox / Jeff Stein]

• (Yes, Ben Carson is endorsing the man who compared him to a child molester. But remember, that wasn't the real Trump!)

  [The Atlantic / Conor Friedersdorf]

• You can take this argument one of two ways. You can take seriously the argument Alexandra Petri puts forward here as a joke: that Trump is, in fact, a Jekyll and Hyde figure.

  [Washington Post / Alexandra Petri]

• Or you can accept the obvious: There is no real Trump. There is only the showman.

  [Vox / Dara Lind]

Everybody Hates Marco

Gerardo Mora/Getty Images

• Say you are a voter in a March 15 primary state hoping to avoid the nightmare above. Your best hope is to support whichever non-Trump candidate is polling best in your state.

  [Bloomberg / Megan McArdle]

• In Florida, right now, that is Marco Rubio. In Ohio, it is John Kasich (who might actually win).

• So Rubio's campaign extended an extraordinary olive branch Friday, when the campaign manager went on CNN to urge Rubio supporters in Ohio to vote for Kasich.

  [CNN]

• The Kasich campaign then set that olive branch on fire: "We are going to win in Ohio without his help, just like he is going to lose in Florida without ours."

  [Vox / Andrew Prokop]

• But there is good news for Rubio! Ted Cruz — riding the (arguable) momentum of receiving National Review's endorsement — might be less of a factor in Florida, as a Super PAC backing him has decided not to spend money on attack ads there.

  [National Review]

• Does this mean the Cruz/Rubio "unity ticket" of conservative pundit Erick Erickson's dreams has finally been agreed to?

  [The Resurgent / Erick Erickson]

• Probably not, no. The pro-Cruz Super PAC, like the Kasich campaign, simply believes Rubio can lose Florida without it having to lift a finger.

  [CNN / Theodore Schliefer]

Is it ever just one iPhone?

Bryan Thomas/Getty Images

• President Obama gave an interview at South by Southwest today in which, inter alia, he called on the tech industry to cooperate with the government to provide access to encrypted devices — making the thoroughly reasonable point that if tech companies take an absolutist position now, they might end up stuck with whatever shoddy, Patriot Act–style panic legislation gets passed in a rush after a national tragedy.

  [The Verge / Casey Newton]

• But if Obama thinks tech and government can work together on this, he might want to tell the Justice Department, which submitted a brief in its case against Apple yesterday that accused the company of using rhetoric that was "not only false, but also corrosive of the very institutions that safeguard our liberty and our rights."

  [The Intercept / Jenna McLaughlin]

• Apple literally held a conference call just to say how upset it was by the brief.

  [The Verge / Chris Welch]

• At the center of the dispute is whether this is really just about one iPhone. Apple argues that any decryption tool that is used once can be used again — and that there will always be more than one request to use a powerful tool.

  [The Verge / Jacob Kastrenakes]

• The DOJ dismisses this claim as an unfair slippery-slope argument. Maybe, in this case, that's true.

  [The Intercept / Jenna McLaughlin]

• Or maybe this is like NSA data, which was supposed to be collected only for serious terrorism cases, expanded beyond that to broad surveillance, and will now be available for use by run-of-the-mill law enforcement agencies.

  [Washington Post / Radley Balko]

MISCELLANEOUS

New England shouldn't be in the Eastern time zone. It should be in the Atlantic one — just like Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and Puerto Rico. [Boston Globe / Tom Emswiler]

• Public shaming is becoming an increasingly popular way of targeting prostitution clients — even before they're convicted of anything. The result is a system in which suspects are gravely punished before having a chance to argue their case.

  [New Republic / Suzy Khimm]

• Divine Secrets of the Wawa Sisterhood.

  [Mashable / Amy Lombard]

• A new study looking at how rumors spread on Twitter found that true rumors are verified in two hours, on average, whereas it takes 14 hours to debunk false rumors.

  [PLOS One / Arkaitz Zubiaga et al.]

• Every woman on TV has the same hair. That may seem like a bold statement, but the photographic evidence speaks for itself.

  [Racked / Julia Rubin]

VERBATIM

"'Can you imagine a situation where a celebrity sex tape would not be newsworthy?' asked the lawyer, Douglas E. Mirell. 'If they were a child,' Mr. Daulerio replied. 'Under what age?' the lawyer pressed. 'Four.'" [NYT / Nick Madigan]

• "All the other jurors thought he should be put to death. If I could have done anything, it would have been to deadlock the jury, but I didn’t have the personal strength to do it."

  [The Marshall Project / Sven Berger]

• "Pop culture has evolved a nifty system, allowing us to luxuriate in music we pretend to hold at arm’s length."

  [NYT Mag / Jody Rosen]

• "He says he'll never forget the day Rogers wrapped up the program, as he always did, by hanging up his sweater and saying, 'You make every day a special day just by being you, and I like you just the way you are.' This time in particular, Rogers had been looking right at Clemmons, and after they wrapped, he walked over. Clemmons asked him, 'Fred, were you talking to me?' 'Yes, I have been talking to you for years,' Rogers said, as Clemmons recalls. 'But you heard me today.'"

  [NPR / Jasmyn Belcher Morris]

• "'We haven’t mattered this much,' D.C. Republican Party Executive Director Patrick Mara told me, 'since Frederick Douglass was a precinct captain.'"

  [Washington Post / Rachel Manteuffel]

WATCH THIS

Afrofuturism mixes sci-fi and social justice. Here’s how it works. [YouTube / Victoria Massie, Gina Barton, and Joe Posner]

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