I could imagine interpreting the statement that way if he had said either before or after that it turned out the shooter was not MAGA. But stating it on its own, the effect in my mind was pretty clear: to communicate that the shooter was MAGA, and that the MAGA gang was doing their best to deny it.

Why would someone have to "desperately try to characterize" someone as something that they clearly are? To me, that language is clearly indicating that it is somehow difficult to do. At that time, it was fairly apparent that he was not MAGA, at least not in any remotely common sense of the word.

I've gotten calls from my bank before, where they tried to get me to authenticate after I answered the phone. I said "look, you called me, I'd be crazy to just answer the phone and give out personal info." They refused to provide any info that I could have used to validate that they were legit (like telling me something about my account number, when my account was created, etc.). They said I had to authenticate with them before they would tell me anything.

Sometimes the rep is understanding, and acknowledges that he would have the same reaction, but other times it's like they don't realize they're asking their customers to do something Very Stupid™.

Oh wow, that sounds awful. Do you think the performance hit is due to the temporary indexing and downloading that happens in the background? [1]

I also have a 13 and definitely don't want it to get slower. This could happen just as a result of less storage space, which eventually impacts performance.

1: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45255780

Perhaps should update title to say "Might Temporarily Impact Battery Life". They're not saying iOS 26 will make your battery last less time indefinitely, just while it finishes installing/optimizing in the background.