If you haven’t read Peter Hessler’s latest contribution to The New Yorker, you’re missing a highly nuanced examination of how President Trump’s brand of populism has rubbed off on the Western Slope.

The piece recounts a spat between our state Sen. Ray Scott and this newspaper over the term “fake news.” Scott, according to Hessler, “believed that Trump has performed a service by popularizing the term” which Scott included in some Trump-style tweets in response to a Sentinel editorial to which he objected.

“I was kind of Trumpish before Trump was cool,” Scott says in Hessler’s article.

Knowing Scott’s affinity for the president’s from-the-hip style of culture-wars messaging, it’s hard to know whether his latest tweet is a serious policy dive or just self-promotion.

Read more at The Grand Junction Daily Sentinel.