Liberals accuse the Republican leadership of likewise concocting an excuse to rally their base against Barack Obama.
Another time I concocted an excuse for why I couldn't go on an all-expenses-paid trip to Switzerland.
A mendacious county Communist Party boss concocts an excuse to send armed troops to crush a tax revolt.
Young Bill enjoyed running away, concocting an excuse to get a lift from sympathetic strangers, spending a day sightseeing in a strange town, and then asking the police to bring him home.
When the former chief justice of the Pakistani Supreme Court, Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry, and his colleagues began bringing cases of unlawful disappearances before the court, President Pervez Musharraf concocted an excuse to impose a state of emergency, removed the justices and many other judges from the bench, and replaced them with his own handpicked cronies.
With a mix of menace and muscle, enforcers settle grievances and slights between teams, be they real, imagined or concocted as an excuse for disorder.
Should you wish to attend a school nativity play, you must concoct a professional excuse before scuttling off.
For his wife, however, he concocts a panicky excuse about having crashed the car; she, suspicious of his movements, asks to see the damage, whereupon he races outside and beats up his vehicle — a fine old Jaguar in racing green — to make his story ring true.
By now, Cuban officials have become impatient, suggesting that the ailments are likely the result of group hysteria, or that the Trump Administration concocted the incident as an excuse to vilify Cuba.
