Hook my beloved. I understand objectively why it is not a good movie, but having watched it 852 times throughout my childhood, I could not find fault with it on a recent rewatch.

edit: I watched that movie so early and so often, that I can recite whole scenes not by word, but by phonemes and cadence, because my language skills weren’t fully developed at the time.

I don’t think it was a hoax, but campaign 101 is to be absolutely confident in your candidacy until the nanosecond you drop out. If you telegraph weakness to the voting public, and then end up staying in the race, that will be a millstone around your neck. Even if he was wavering in the weeks leading up to his dropout, there would be zero upside to communicating that publicly.