Sources on disgraced former President Trump’s team tell Politico Playbook that they did not intentionally have their Orange God Emperor announce his pending third felony indictment on Tuesday morning to eclipse increasingly doomed rival Florida Governor Ron DeSantis’s big interview with CNN’s Jake Tapper later that day, however the “serendipity” wasn’t lost on them.

“Was the former president trolling his top 2024 opponent by taking over the news cycle? We were told that no, it wasn’t intentional – though Trump’s team didn’t mind how it rained on DeSantis’ parade,” Politico wrote, underscoring but not really even trying to appreciate just how fucking warped Trump’s team and really the GOP’s whole situation are these days. They think a criminal indictment helps add to his momentum with Republican primary voters and they’re kind of right, insane as it sounds. Even if there’s a case to be made that they might have actually sort of “helped” DeSantis by stomping on his interview and thus limiting the damage he did to himself with his shitty performance, the larger reality is the one described in the above headline.

All that being said, DeSantis’s CNN bit probably still gotten more bandwidth if Michigan Attorney Dana Nessel hadn’t indicted all 16 of the state’s fake Trump 2020 electors at more or less the same moment the prerecorded interview began airing, forcing the network to cut into it. DeSantis’s minions can still blame Trump for that very unluckily timed news drop, albeit indirectly.