Team Trump’s defense of his Second Amendment remarks continues to make no sense.

Trump and his entourage have a clear approach for whenever his mouth gets them in trouble: to declare that he said something completely different, and to assert it with total boldness.

His remarks about Hillary Clinton yesterday—“And by the way, if she gets to pick her judges, nothing you can do, folks ... although the Second Amendment people, maybe there is, I don’t know”—are an instructive example. After numerous observers said it sounded like he was advocating Clinton’s potential assassination, Trump went to the one place you can always expect intellectual honesty: Sean Hannity’s TV show.

Rather than ask Trump what he meant, Hannity felt the need to kick off the spin himself: “Obviously, you’re saying that there’s a strong political movement within the Second Amendment, and if people mobilize and vote, they can stop Hillary from having this impact on the Court. But that’s not how the media’s spinning it. What’s your reaction to it?”

Never mind that Trump clearly appeared to be talking about a scenario in which Clinton is already elected. Still, on CNN this morning, Trump’s former campaign manager Corey Lewandowski took the same tack, while explaining, “I think what you have, is you have Donald Trump talking stream of conscious [sic].” Even then, Chris Cuomo managed to trip Lewandowski up into saying, “I don’t know what he meant”—which is perhaps the best thing you can say about it.