It’s the media’s fault, Trump said at CNN’s Thursday town hall in South Carolina, that he got dragged into a fight with Pope Francis, because the media exaggerated Francis’s critique of Trump’s immigration policy. Trump actually has a point here. But by clearing the air he’s basically admitting he broadsided the Pope—hit the proverbial red button, if you will—on the basis of overheated media reports without doing a moment’s worth of due diligence. It’s almost like a metaphor for everything that terrifies people about Donald Trump’s increasingly likely presidency.