Two days ago, I wrote a column under the title “The Morning After.” In it, I offered my own conjecture about how the election results might be received and why that’s important.

After staying up well past midnight last night — long enough to be confident that the unofficial outcome would stick (I’m unable to forget what happened in the wee hours of election night four years ago) — my first bleary-eyed move this morning was to grab my phone and scan the news. What I saw instantly cut through the cobwebs.

By chance, the first site that popped up was the Associated Press news summary. As we all know, the AP is the long-standing news feed that is supposedly nonpartisan, objective, straightforward — and boring. Here, verbatim, is the top-line summary, the first of the “key points” on last night’s election:

The victory validates his bare-knuckle approach to politics. He attacked his Democratic rival, Kamala Harris, in deeply personal — often misogynistic and racist — terms as he pushed an apocalyptic picture of a country overrun by violent migrants.

Say what? Were they even paying attention?

Trump’s “bare-knuckle” approach? Trump’s the one they tried to bankrupt, keep tied up in court, and hopefully throw in jail — multiple indictments, three trials, half a billion in fines, 34 felony convictions (for possibly incorrect book-keeping); he’s the one they tried to get thrown off the ballot in multiple states; he’s the one who barely survived two assassination attempts. And let’s not forget his last term with the Russia collusion hoax and two impeachments.

And his “deeply personal” attacks on his Democrat rival? Hmm, that would be the Democrat rival who called him a fascist, equated him to Hitler, said that he would likely jail his opponents (sound familiar?), and concurred with superstar Oprah Winfrey that Americans might never get another chance to vote if he wins.

Hopefully, AP heads will also clear this morning when they realize that their readers — who double every four years as presidential election voters — saw right through that nonsense.

The second detail that caught my eye this morning was that Harris has not conceded and so far has made no public statements.

Bottom line: Reality will creep in, but it will take some time. There’s some serious denial floating around out there. But it’s still a great day for the USA!