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Would he or wouldn’t he? — 16 Comments

  1. Vanderleun:

    Did you by any chance write Bill Clinton’s “depends what the meaning of ‘is’ is” speech?

  2. Andrew C. McCarthy has a different take on the context of would/wouldn’t:

    On the honesty meter, I was most dissuaded by the context of “would” in the president’s original remarks. He was making a case for why one should harbor doubts about the intelligence agencies’ conclusion that Russia meddled. His use of “would” (“I don’t see any reason why it would be Russia”) made perfect sense; his revisionist “wouldn’t” is discordant.

  3. Ann:

    I could not disagree with McCarthy more. I think he has it backwards.

    Neither McCarthy nor I actually know for certain whether Trump initially misspoke and meant “wouldn’t” when he said “would.” But “wouldn’t” makes a lot more sense in the paragraph, with the word “but” in that next sentence. And people often make errors when they are trying to construct a sentence with a double negative, such as “I don’t see any reason why it wouldn’t be.”

    McCarthy writes “He [Trump] was making a case for why one should harbor doubts about the intelligence agencies’ conclusion that Russia meddled.” Absolutely not! As I wrote in this post, Trump was NOT making that case. He was making case #3: I’m somewhere in-between. He was going back and forth between the 2 sides, saying a kind of “on the one hand, this; on the other hand, that.”

    Here’s his quote in context, with my comments in brackets:

    …I’ve been asking…for months…Where is the server? I want to know where is the server and what is the server saying? [here he’s questioning the job US intelligence has been doing]

    With that being said, all I can do is ask the question. My people came to me, Dan Coates came to me and some others, they said they think it’s Russia. I have President Putin; he just said it’s not Russia. [here he’s saying something like “on the one hand, US intelligence claims it is Russia; on the other hand, Putin says it’s not.” Either/or.]

    I will say this: I don’t see any reason why it would [wouldn’t] be. But I really do want to see the server. [The word “but” is key, as I explained earlier These two sentences balance out each other as well, “on the one hand, on the other hand…” In other words, on the one hand, I don’t see why it wouldn’t be Russia; on the other hand, we need to see what the server says.]

    But I have — I have confidence in both parties. [Here he is balancing the two sides again. That’s the pattern.] I — I really believe that this will probably go on for a while, but I don’t think it can go on without finding out what happened to the server…

    So I have great confidence in my intelligence people, but I will tell you that President Putin was extremely strong and powerful in his denial today. [Still another balancing sentence, continuing the pattern.]

    McCarthy is a brilliant lawyer and an excellent writer himself. But he hasn’t parsed this in detail, as I have, in terms of speech patterns and psychology.

  4. “…connection to Iran.”

    Too soon to jump to conclusions. The Iranian people are NOT the Iranian regime. (That is, not necessarily.)

    The question is: does Strzok have any ideological affinity to the Mullahs’ regime, as does Valerie Jarrett and her anti-American parents.

    While it does not necessarily follow that he does, if it is the case, then he’s a man after Jarrett’s heart.

    And perfectly positioned.

    So that things do indeed become even more “interesting” than they already are.

  5. Trump “to the Finland Station”.

    (Well, sort of….)

    As the anti-Trump agit-prop gathers tsunami-like strength and the insanity rises to fever pitch…

    ..who knows what’s true any more?

    Answer 1: It does not matter….as long as Trump is excoriated and eviscerated and his supporters ostracized and dehumanized?

    Answer 2: The exact opposite of what the hysterical MSM is howling about?

    As the saying goes, this will not end well barring some deep introspection from the usual suspects, though what are the chances of this happening?)….

    One searches desperately for some sobriety and honesty (like a ship-wrecked person desperately grasping at any available flotsam), here’s something most interesting, IF true… FWIW:
    https://www.chroniclesmagazine.org/trump-in-helsinki-the-score-i/

  6. I don’t see any reason why I would believe Trump’s correction other than to pay him the courtesy of the benefit of the doubt.

  7. Why *would* Putin have preferred a Trump presidency to a Hillary presidency? Hillary would clearly have been easier for him to manipulate, based on history…And it was quite clear that Trump would be much more pro-fracking than Hillary, and expanded US oil & gas production is a serious threat to the viability of the Russian economy.

    Did Putin perhaps believe that Hillary was so unstable that she posed a serious threat of global nuclear war?

    Or did he think that Trump was so unstable that he would wreck the US completely?

    Or did he really not care who won and just want to spread maximum chaos and disruption in the US political environment?

    Khrushchev, when deciding to put Soviet missiles in Cuba, said to his associates “Let’s throw a hedgehog down Uncle Sam’s pants”

    I think the Trickster archetype is active in Russian intelligence.

    (Trump, too, has much of the Trickster in him)

  8. This furor will probably die down

    no, it wont, they are not free to do that..
    they are kind of under orders as a collective

    even less so given they just compared it to pearl harbor and kristalnact… really! they did!!!

  9. Why *would* Putin have preferred a Trump presidency to a Hillary presidency? Hillary would clearly have been easier for him to manipulate, based on history

    heck no.
    they want a thing they can foil and parasite off of
    NOT a nother one of them – look how their games in china turned out for them… huge enemy on their border always overhanging waiting for a mistake..

    last thing they both need is a state whose morals are like theirs!!!

  10. I was skeptical of Trump’s walk-back from “would” to “wouldn’t” until I read that he approved the release of the Russians’ indictments BEFORE the Helsinki summit.

    There’s no good reason why he would have the indictments publicly announced then publicly contradict them.

  11. Neo — Exactly! This is standard Talmudic argument: “On the one hand, Hillel says this, and on the other hand, Shammai says that. Let’s see the proof.”

    Since the Left knows the evidence will never be produced, they are perfectly happy to pretend Trump’s being skeptical without any evidence being produced means he’s favoring Putin.

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