And you think you have the high ground to pass moral judgement on others, strangers in fact. So perhaps there are 3 that should reflect on their actions then huh?

I'm genuinely curious if you really believe that they were never arguing that Trump was a Maoist, as they're now suggesting. Like when you read where they said:

I’m not trying to be mean but how in practice is this substantially different than Maoism?

They may sell it to you in a different package but the contents are essentially the same and I’d argue the result would be largely the same.

So in practice they aren’t functionally different

Have I actually "misread" or "misinterpreted" that? What other interpretation exists?

They're just playing games and acting coy because they know they can't actually defend what they said. It's clear bad faith, and I tend to react with hostility towards that. They're just good enough at operating in bad faith to muddy the waters.