He was calm and precise and he conceded things — he conceded the home supply, he conceded that it was poor practice, he conceded that he should have called poison control rather than the non-emergency line, he apologized to the jury for that, twice.

Conceding is the whole technique.

You give away the small ones so that the big one looks like the only thing you are refusing.

He explained the searches.

He explained the bottle in the drawer, which he said was locked because there were children in the house, which is both true and the correct thing to do and which he said with a certain gentle emphasis.

He explained the texts, which was harder, and he did it by arguing that a man in a custody fight talks about it constantly and unpleasantly, and that anybody’s messages read badly when four are selected out of eleven thousand.