What you're missing is that Tether is not truly bankrupt yet. Yes, sane accounting would say their liabilities exceed their assets, but only because 26% of their assets are a high risk loan to Bitfinex. They still have assets > USDT supply. What makes the liabilities exceed the assets is the credit risk associated with the loan.

You can't undisputedly say Bitfinex won't be able to pay the loan. Maybe the frozen assets are real and will be unfrozen soon. Nobody knows. They aren't bankrupt yet, but in a very risky position of becoming so.

Another possibility is that you misread the article title, which seems kind of misleading. It says that only 74% of Tether is backed by cash or cash-equivalents. The loan to Bitfinex is neither, so it should be the remaining 26% (26% of $2.8B is $745M).

That being said, I agree with you on the Wiley Coyote point. Tether should be completely disreputable, not only because of it's risky situation, but because the whole move was completely shady. Silently changing the wording of the website, after assuring everyone that they had it 100% backed... I don't see how anyone can trust it anymore.