It’s not often that people can admit that they’re wrong, but maybe we – and by “we” I mean the entire world – need to rethink our position on President Donald Trump in the light of his statements today.
See, during the press conference after their closed door meeting in Helsinki barely a day ago, Trump said that sure, his intelligence head had told him that they had plenty of evidence linking the Russian government to meddling in the last presidential election, but “President Putin says it’s not Russia. I don’t see any reason why it would be.”
And sure, everyone jumped up and down about how that looked awfully like treason and that watching Trump accept verbal denials from the Russian leader rather than consider the evidence provided by multiple American intelligence agencies seemed not just un-American but abjectly stupid.
But it turns out that Trump didn’t mean that at all!
“In a key sentence in my remarks I said the word ‘would’ instead of ‘wouldn’t’,” he explained to reporters. “The sentence should have been: ‘I don’t see any reason why it wouldn’t be Russia’. Sort of a double negative. I think that probably clarifies things pretty good on itself.”
And it does, Don. It’s clarified things really, really good on itself – because suddenly everything makes so much more sense!
And sure, Trump’s new version of his statement sits rather uncomfortably with the next thing he said, which was “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.” Which almost sounds like he absolutely meant “would” rather than wouldn’t.
But hey – let’s take him at his word. And all those things that Trump’s claimed which were obviously the opposite of the truth? Why, he probably just misspoke!
The adorable duffer just left out the bit that made clear he meant the exact opposite of what he seemingly said. You know, the way that everyone does.
For example, “An ‘extremely credible source’ has called my office and told me that Barack Obama’s birth certificate ISN’T a fraud.” Ah, that makes a lot more sense, as does “We had the NOT biggest audience in the history of inaugural speeches.”
Pres. Trump 'won’t allow' anyone to demean people in Inauguration crowd. "We had the biggest audience in the history of inaugural speeches." pic.twitter.com/Rt1c2f4Y9U
— ABC News (@ABC) January 26, 2017
When talking about the Nazi demonstration in Charlotteville in which an anti-racism demonstrator was murdered, he probably meant to say “…you also had people that were very fine people on ONE sides WHICH WERE THE PEOPLE THAT WEREN’T NAZIS.” Yep, that’d be it.
And no doubt he meant to say “In addition to winning the Electoral College in a landslide, I DIDN’T won the popular vote if you deduct the millions of people who DIDN’T voted illegally BECAUSE THAT DIDN’T ACTUALLY HAPPEN.”
And presumably when talking about immigrants to the US, he meant to comment “Why are we having all these people from NOT shithole countries come here?”
You know what? Let’s just assume that Trump means the opposite of everything he says and is just mysteriously but consistently confusing his antonyms.
And suddenly he really is the most truthful president that’s ever been!