Patterico's Pontifications

5/30/2018

Three Examples to Show How Trump’s Statement about the Official Was False

Filed under: General — Patterico @ 7:59 am



If I’m going to spend my morning writing examples to demonstrate that Donald Trump denied the existence of the senior U.S. official quoted by the New York Times, I’m making a post out of it.

Let’s recall what Trump said:

The Failing ‪@nytimes‬ quotes “a senior White House official,” who doesn’t exist, as saying “even if the meeting were reinstated, holding it on June 12 would be impossible, given the lack of time and the amount of planning needed.” WRONG AGAIN! Use real people, not phony sources.

This reduces to

#1: X quotes “a senior White House official,” who doesn’t exist, as saying Y. Wrong! Use real people as your sources.

And many are rewriting Trump’s statement to mean:

#2: X quotes a senior White House official as saying Y, but no “senior White House official who said Y” exists.

But those statements are not equivalent. So the rewriting changes the meaning.

In #2, the rewriting preferred by Trump defenders, the existence of the official-who-said-Y depends on his having said Y. But in #1, AS IT IS PHRASED, there is no such interdependence expressed by the speaker between the existence of the official and the nature of what he said. He is simply saying the official does not exist, independent of what he goes on to say about Y.

If you don’t like symbols, here are some hypotheticals and illustrations to make the point clearer.

1. If I said: “A witness described the Abominable Snowman, who does not exist, as being seven feet tall,” you would not read that as an assertion that my denial of the Snowman’s existence depends on his height.

2. Hypo: Trump says Obama wiretapped him. James Comey says: “Trump claims that a wiretap on his phone, which never existed, was placed on his phone by Obama. Wrong!” If it emerged (in the hypo) that there was a wiretap placed on Trump’s phone by someone in the Obama administration — but not by Obama himself — Comey still lied, by saying no wiretap existed.

No sensible person would write a piece saying Comey told the truth, because the wiretap on Trump’s phone that was placed by someone other than Obama means “a wiretap placed by Obama” did not exist.

3. If Obama had said: “National Review says the gender pay gap in my administration, which does not exist, has women making 90 cents for every dollar men make. That is wrong! Stop making up phony concepts!” you would read that as a denial of a pay gap in his administration. If it turned out that women actually made 91 cents in his administration for every dollar men made, instead of 90 cents, you would not say that he was correct to assert that the pay gap “does not exist” simply because the actual pay gap is different than as represented by National Review.

And if Obama said: “All I was saying was that no gender pay gap of 90 cents exists” you would say he is rewriting his statement to mean something different than what he actually had said.

People are rewriting Trump’s tweet to make it say something different. Look: I get that the New York Times inaccurately paraphrased the official. We can acknowledge that and criticize it. But he still exists, and Trump said he didn’t. Any argument to the contrary consists of rewriting #1 as #2, but they don’t mean the same thing.

[Cross-posted at The Jury Talks Back.]

322 Responses to “Three Examples to Show How Trump’s Statement about the Official Was False”

  1. If you realize you are wrong, the move is to express impatience with the whole discussion.

    For God’s sake, don’t express an opinion that responds to the post. Just throw up your hands in disgust at the notion that anyone should care about what you spent over 800 comments discussing in another thread.

    Protip: Use of the term OCD is the cherry on top of a Partisan Bullshit Sundae.

    Patterico (115b1f)

  2. layers of editors:

    https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/russian-journalist-babchenko-turns-up-alive-after-reported-murder/ar-AAy0HzT?ocid=spartandhp

    i’m sure the contraktiki and the spetsnaz have to done their best effort,

    narciso (d1f714)

  3. You are continuing the Snowman fallacy.

    The “doesn’t exist” modifier applies to the whole concept (THEPERSONWHOSAIDTHAT) even if it is in the middle of the phrase. He is not denying the existence of ALL WH officials. But of one who said impossible.

    “My sister said she rode a horse, that doesn’t exist, that has wings.”

    I’m not denying horses in general or that my sister ever rode any horses. But the one with wings? No.

    Anonymous (d41cee)

  4. you can’t trust the New York Times though cause they just make crap up

    happyfeet (28a91b)

  5. 1. If I said: “A witness described the Abominable Snowman, who does not exist, as being seven feet tall,” you would not read that as an assertion that my denial of the Snowman’s existence depends on his height.”

    If the witness actually said the Abominable Snowman was 15 feet tall, the witness who said he was seven feet tall does not exist.

    It’s that simple, creating a new thread changes nothing.

    harkin (2fa2ca)

  6. “My sister said she rode a horse, that doesn’t exist, that has wings.”

    You may not have realized it, but you have made a subtle change to the example that removes it from the category of what Trump said. In your example, given the structure of the sentence as you articulated it, the phrase “that has wings” further modifies “horse.” But Trump, by saying: “as saying” [what the NYT claimed], is not further modifying the word “official.”

    Trump said #1 from the post and not #2, which is what demolishes harlin’s point that he has triumphantly made a dozen times without once actually engaging with my actual arguments.

    Patterico (2184ae)

  7. If the witness actually said the Abominable Snowman was 15 feet tall, the witness who said he was seven feet tall does not exist

    You say it’s that simple but you don’t seem to understand my example. The speaker is talking about the existence of the snowman, not the witness. Your comment seems to be asserting that Trump is correct to say the NYT does not exist, which I’m sure you and he would prefer, but it has nothing to do with the logical point of my example.

    Patterico (2184ae)

  8. now this fellow is vile, to deal with, but what’s the alternative:

    https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/president-trump-confirms-top-north-korean-official-visit/story?id=55503984

    narciso (d1f714)

  9. It’s hilarious, but sad and disturbing if you choose to dwell on it, that Trump’s fans are bothering to defend him on this one.

    The “doesn’t exist” modifier applies to the whole concept

    Nope. This is extremely bizarre. We’re able to talk about specifically what Hottinger said, and the degree to which the NYT accurately paraphrased him, without lying that they used a fake source. Trump was condemning the use of anonymous sources as though the mysterious media using them can just make people up. Trump knows many of his fans are Alex Jones types who are extremely paranoid about the deep state conspiracy stuff. Trump also knows he can insist his source be anonymous, setting up this little scam.

    We have heard this briefing. We’ve heard what the NYT heard. Not only was their paraphrase from extremely unlikely conditions to impossible not that big a deal, the person giving the briefing was only anonymous by White House order, and the White House claiming he doesn’t exist is a pure lie.

    If I say that the commenter “Anonymous” took the bet with Beldar yesterday, and Beldar replies that you don’t exist, Beldar would be wrong even if you did not take the bet. The idea this needs to be explained is just another example of how many Americans actually would completely sign on to a totalitarian regime. This is why we never should have elected Donald Trump. Hillary, for her million flaws, simply would not have inspired this kind of blind and dangerous loyalty. Not that I prefer her to him, but I don’t think she is as dangerous.

    Dustin (6ba663)

  10. teh Men in White Coats are on the way…

    Colonel Haiku (e208fd)

  11. “My sister said she rode a horse, that doesn’t exist, that has wings.”

    A true parallel would be: your sister really rode a horse. It was four years old. A witness said: “your sister rode a horse, which doesn’t exist, and afterwards she claimed that the horse was three years old. She is wrong!” The witness has denied that your sister rode a horse at all. The age of the horse being three does not make the witness correct that the horse does not exist.

    Patterico (2184ae)

  12. 6. That’s a decent point.

    Anonymous (d41cee)

  13. they are going a long way, for a summit, they don’t want to go off, they just didn’t think they would have to abide by the terms,

    narciso (d1f714)

  14. The idea this needs to be explained is just another example of how many Americans actually would completely sign on to a totalitarian regime.

    This is the real concern. A lesser concern, but an interesting one, is finding out just how difficult abstract logical thought is for many people.

    Patterico (2184ae)

  15. This is what I know:
    – the name of the WH official who was interviewed concernig the June 12th meeting was Matthew Pottinger.
    – the transcripts of the interview have him saying “the ball is in North Korea’s court right now” and “there’s really not a lot of time” and “June 12th is in 10 minutes.”

    What I don’t know is the name of the WH official that was paraphrased by the NYT as saying the meeting was “impossible”

    I will however make a couple of predictions:
    – the lawyers on this blog will continue to parse the sentence structure of this tweet.
    – one attorney will lament the incivility of the conversation, all the while making several attacks on his rhetorical opponents.
    – if the meeting does occur on the 12th, the banner headlines from the NYT won’t read ” TRUMP ACCOMPLISHES THE IMPOSSIBLE, JUNE 12TH MEETING BACK ON”
    – pigeon chess will be rampant.

    bendover (8c9eab)

  16. No why would somebody go to the trouble of claiming that your sister rode a horse that doesn’t exist? Well, if they have a habit of accusing your sister of delusions, it would make sense, wouldn’t it?

    Patterico (2184ae)

  17. You could ride the horse to a picnic or a scenic overlook

    happyfeet (28a91b)

  18. No why would somebody go to the trouble of claiming that your sister rode a horse that doesn’t exist? Well, if they have a habit of accusing your sister of delusions, it would make sense, wouldn’t it?

    I thought the sister claimed she rode the horse?

    BuDuh (fc15db)

  19. well it’s a ‘horse with no name, it used to be out on the range, I can’t remember the name’

    narciso (d1f714)

  20. If you read Trump’s tweet literally, you have to assume he is asserting (i) there is no such thing as a Senior White House Official or (ii) any New York Times quoted Senior White House Official is a fantasy creation. I can see Trump arguing (ii) in one of those rallies of his. Both statements are nonsense (though I expect thought (ii) would make the MAGA hat crowd happy).

    But that “who doesn’t exist” clause may simply be mislaid. How long did Trump take in crafting this message? Did he understand he was dangling his modifier in the wrong place? Did he really care? The interpretation Mollie and company are putting on this tweet may be that group correcting the President’s grammar. Trump is a master of bumptious ambiguity, so who can say that they really DO understand what the President meant to say.

    We are truly in a post-modernist presidency.

    Appalled (96665e)

  21. “My sister said she rode a horse, that doesn’t exist, that has wings.”

    The sister statement broken down:

    My sister said she rode a horse. My sister said it didn’t exist. My sister said it had wings.

    “it” in the second two sentences can only mean the horse.

    BuDuh (fc15db)

  22. (ii) any New York Times quoted Senior White House Official is a fantasy creation

    This is a show your work thread. How do you literally read “any” in the tweet?

    BuDuh (fc15db)

  23. Now I’m late. See you this evening.

    BuDuh (fc15db)

  24. Appalled, you do raise the best defense available to Trump. He said something he is 100% aware is not true, and he raised an argument against the use of anonymous sources in bad faith, since it was his administration that insisted on the anonymity. But Trump tweets off the cuff, much like Roseanne Barr, and he is one of those people whose decades of bankruptcies and fraud settlements and divorces suggests he doesn’t really think clearly about reality.

    When Trump was slamming away at his keyboard, hopefully from the Oval Office, he may have not taken enough time to review this tweet before submitting it. After all, Trump can barely string together verbal arguments, and Twitter is closer to that than other written communication. Of course he has missed his opportunity to clarify that he isn’t saying the NYT lied about having the Anonymous Senior WH Source that Trump provided to them, and he merely wants to make clear it’s not absolutely impossible for the June 12 date to happen. But that kind of normal, presidential sounding way of communication is the opposite of how Trump trades on hate, anger, paranoia, and deception. Trump has been setting the media up for years now by providing valuable information only with anonymous sources, and also calling out the use of anonymous sources as proof the media can never really be trusted. He is a con-artist, and his screw up over this example is extremely valuable to the American people.

    Dustin (6ba663)

  25. if the New York Times just told the truth none of this would’ve happened that’s for sure

    happyfeet (28a91b)

  26. I think that was a lyric from America, but the thread suggested itself

    narciso (d1f714)

  27. This is a show your work thread. How do you literally read “any” in the tweet?

    BuDuh

    Read Trump’s tweet. He demands the NYT name their sources. “Use real people as your sources.” he says. He says “The Failing ‪@nytimes‬ quotes “a senior White House official,” who doesn’t exist,”

    Trump is accusing the NYT of quoting someone. That was a lie. No quotation marks.
    Trump is accusing the NYT of having a senior white house official as a source. Trump provided a source and insisted he not be named. Two more lies.

    Trump’s claim is clear: no senior WH source that was used by the NYT exists. None. Not any. Zero. Non-existent.

    This defense you have raised (and will deny you have raised because it is preposterous) is that the NYT could have relied on a senior WH Official, under conditions of anonymity, and in good faith paraphrased the extremely unlikely into the word “impossible”, but Trump was not at all deceptive to conflate this person with the person he describes as not existing, as fictitious, in his smear that when the NYT used an anonymous source, they actually just made stuff up, and had no briefing.

    All this deception of the American people, embraced by the GOP.

    Dustin (6ba663)

  28. if the New York Times just told the truth none of this would’ve happened that’s for sure

    happyfeet

    Yeah, if only the NYT hadn’t lied about having a briefing with an anonymous senior WH official. That guy didn’t exist. What the hell, NYT?

    Dustin (6ba663)

  29. they shouldn’t lie so much but they’re getting worse over time not better

    happyfeet (28a91b)

  30. 29:

    “That was a lie.” It was incorrect. It was not a lie.

    “Trump provided a source and insisted he not be named.” No. His people did.

    Anonymous (d41cee)

  31. 30: I doubt Trump would have reacted had the NYT accurately reflected the briefing.

    Anonymous (d41cee)

  32. just like the misrepresented memos, the times and others accepted from wittes, so either he was lying to them, or they knew and printed lies,

    narciso (d1f714)

  33. “Your comment seems to be asserting that Trump is correct to say the NYT does not exist, “

    I didn’t think you could exceed the false logic from before but you did.

    “which I’m sure you and he would prefer,

    …and you conflate the former with jumping another hemisphere to declare you are sure I wish the NYTimes did not exist. Wow – talk about having rules for everyone but yourself.
    Feel free to do one of your A, B, C etc. logic deals showing how my comments led you to that conclusion.

    I’m done with this subject because, as you already declared about me, you can’t be serious. All I can say to close would be to read comment 15 from bend as a last chance at reality. I may even take a break – good health and enjoy!

    harkin (2fa2ca)

  34. Wait – I just noticed.

    The Patterico who said he was sure I wished the NYTimes did not exist – does not exist!

    The one who exists is the one who said he was sure I would PREFER that the NYT did not exist.

    I was wrong. I admitted and corrected the error of saying he said something he did not say.

    See how simple it is?

    harkin (2fa2ca)

  35. #23 (BuDa) —

    How do I get any? Ummm, go reread the tweet, if you don’t have it memorized yet…

    I guess there is a third possibility from the President’s tweet — Trump can read the minds of New York Times reporters and knows exactly when they are conjuring a fantasy person to stick phony words into. But I don’t see DJT keeping his ability to read minds a secret, do you?

    Appalled (96665e)

  36. The “doesn’t exist” modifier applies to the whole concept

    If that’s true, then the right to keep and bear arms belongs only to the militia.

    Chuck Bartowski (bc1c71)

  37. Trump saying the WH official doesn’t exist was his way of accusing the NY Times of manufacturing fake news.

    Trump’s round-about, somewhat ambiguous, statment is more true than not, if inarticulate when parsed by overly excited nitpickers ready to pounce on any lothsome excuse to run the man down.

    Trump’s manner of expressing himself in tweets and viva voce is decidedly unique to him and highly colloquial. Sensible Americans free from debilitating derangement syndromes easily understand Trump’s points, even if self-appointed censors pretending otherwise grasp at grammatical straws as they drown in pedantic foolishness.

    To criticize Trump for failing to tweet or speak in language suitable for publication in the Encyclopedia Britannica is to demand a standard from him the Editors of the NY Times wouldn’t apply to themselves, let alone blog commenters.

    ropelight (0078db)

  38. @ Appalled, who wrote in part (#21):

    Trump is a master of bumptious ambiguity ….

    That phrasing sings to me. Bravo.

    Beldar (fa637a)

  39. Oh for the love of all that is sacred…No wonder that thread got quiet. I should have known it was too good to be true. There is no person who exists who said that the meeting was “impossible”. You even admit this. There is nothing else to argue about. It’s a strawberries thing.

    I hate to throw in a hypothetical, especially as I have ZERO plans to argue it, but what the h-e-double-hockey-sticks does it matter if someone in the WH did say this? Seriously.

    It’s the same thing, over and over, and nothing changes. There’s a cliche about that as well.

    Skorcher (ac561d)

  40. Three Examples to Show How Trump’s Statement about the Official Was False

    I don’t have a problem with this. The formulation I objected to was where some claimed that Trump was lying. He didn’t do that. As to his inartful use of language in objecting to NYT’s false reporting, I would call him guilty of making his case in a way that was technically inaccurate.

    But, everyone knew what he meant.

    Anon Y. Mous (6cc438)

  41. And he’s still president…..

    EPWJ (0d53bb)

  42. I study the POTUS’ statments very carefully. They excite me overly! Every time he gives me a lothsome excuse, I pounce on it while running the man down.

    You know how on radio and TV commercials, there are often a few seconds of very rapid disclaimers along the lines of “offer not valid in CT, NY & the Fiji Islands, serious side effects including exploding internal organs may occur,” and so forth? I think Trump’s adult daycare minders need to take turns providing a running set of disclaimers like that every time he speaks or tweets in public, just to remind us — as did his not-a-defender-just-a-push-backer swc yesterday — that “Trump is a huckster and a salesman[, and that “p]uffery” right up to and including purposeful untruths are part of the bag of tricks.”

    Beldar (fa637a)

  43. Kim. Yong choi, unlike his American counterpart is one whose unoforn is dripping in blood

    narciso (d1f714)

  44. He maybe kin to the defense chief executed earlier.

    narciso (d1f714)

  45. I’m just a native English speaker with a college degree. My read is that Trump accused the NYT of fabricating a source. I don’t think Trump criticized the NYT for reporting on inaccurately by writing “impossible” when “extremely unlikely” was more accurate.

    I think this is a great example. People that strenuously argue that he didn’t mean what he clearly said shouldn’t be listened to. That’s useful data.

    Time123 (a7a01b)

  46. @ Skorcher: For those who define the issue thusly — “Did the WH spokesman use the word ‘impossible’ or not?” — you’re correct that there is nothing to argue about.

    That is not the only possible issue for discussion that’s raised by this scenario, however.

    If Trump had tweeted, “the WH official referenced by the NYT never used the word ‘impossible,'” and he’d left it at that, Trump would have been absolutely justified and righteous.

    That’s not what he said, though. He said more. And some of us believe that in so doing, he misled the American public to a much greater degree than the NYT’s paraphrase did. And we believe he did that on purpose, which we further believe is contrary to the dignity and responsibilities of the office he temporarily holds.

    Beldar (fa637a)

  47. wups, should be “reporting inaccurately”, not “reporting on inaccurately” sorry for the mistake.

    Time123 (6e0727)

  48. Mislead the American people in what? What in this tweet is “misleading”, intentionally or otherwise, in a way that makes this such a crisis? You have really lost your mind if you think this is some sort of thing to get all wee-wee’d up about.

    The Failing @nytimes quotes “a senior White House official,” who doesn’t exist, as saying “even if the meeting were reinstated, holding it on June 12 would be impossible, given the lack of time and the amount of planning needed.” WRONG AGAIN! Use real people, not phony sources.

    Skorcher (ac561d)

  49. Skorcher:

    If the President is going to call out the NYT for lying, he should be careful not to lie while doing so.

    Appalled (96665e)

  50. If the President is going to call out the NYT for lying, he should be careful not to lie while doing so.

    And what did he lie about? What is the big crisis in what he said that caused the stock market to drop, birds to fall from the sky, and will keep the country from winning the next war? It’s a year and a half into this, what did he say that is soooo far off the mark that y’all are running around with your hair on fire? There’s lots more lies, yes even ones from Trump, that this country is swimming in right now. Lies from years ago we are only now finding out were lies. Why is this such a bedwetting moment?

    Skorcher (ac561d)

  51. the key thing to know is the NYT is a bunch of liars

    they have one job, you see

    happyfeet (28a91b)

  52. the key thing to know is the NYT is a bunch of liars

    To that point. If anything in the department of lies is a threat to The American People, the Republic, or even Western Civilization in general, it is the deception going on in our MSM and our major academic institutions. How about a half dozen threads on what a croc our educational institutions have become? I mean if we’re really concerned about threats t to The American People, the Republic, or even Western Civilization in general.

    Skorcher (ac561d)

  53. @ Skorcher: The NYT’s use of “impossible” without a qualifier like “practically” or “very nearly” is not a very big story. In the list of journalistic sins of the NYT, this one barely registers at all in terms of its practical significance.

    It was Trump who turned this into a big deal. He deliberately chose to make it into a big deal. If you’re surprised or disappointed or disapproving of the fact that this is being treated like a big deal, the person you should be directing all that at is Donald J. Trump.

    Beldar (fa637a)

  54. Your secondary target should be all the Trump supporters who insist that the only possible topic of discussion is whether Pottinger used the word “impossible.” By refusing to recognize that there are other issues implicated by Trump’s tweet, you guys are indeed fanning the flames and turning Trump’s big deal into an even bigger deal.

    Beldar (fa637a)

  55. To use swc’s apt word, Trump’s tweet is an instance of “puffery,” even viewed in the light most favorable to Trump.

    Some of us still expect truth, not puffery, from a POTUS. Others are perfectly happy with “I knew what he meant, and the NYT are all scumbags so I don’t care if the POTUS is accurate or, instead, making stuff up (like the claim that the WH adviser at issue doesn’t exist, or the claim that the NYT was purporting to quote him).

    Beldar (fa637a)

  56. @55. … they have one job, you see

    Remember what happened to Eastern Flight 401, Mr. Feet?!

    DCSCA (797bc0)

  57. No, y’all are the ones making a big deal out of it. 900+ posts now on this. I just checked PDT’s twitter feed for the first time in my life (thanks for prompting that) and I gave up after counting 25 tweets (whew) since the one y’all are crying about. Nothing more about the subject that I saw in those following 25. Get a grip.

    Skorcher (ac561d)

  58. The presence of general yong choi, suggests otherwise, Steve 57 would remind us, this is not an unalloyed good, like when let duc tho was given credit for the Nobel prizem

    narciso (d1f714)

  59. People that strenuously argue that he didn’t mean what he clearly said shouldn’t be listened to. That’s useful data.

    Time123

    Great point.

    Dustin (ba94b2)

  60. By refusing to recognize that there are other issues implicated by Trump’s tweet, you guys are indeed fanning the flames and turning Trump’s big deal into an even bigger deal.

    What other issues are there? That’s all this is about. There’s no there there.

    Skorcher (ac561d)

  61. Actually Beldar, the use of impossible is a big deal in the context of the NYT article. SWC, whom you seem to love to quote, said it best in #62 of the enormous thread discussing this issue:

    “BUT, that wouldn’t have let the NYT run the story with the POV it wanted to advance — that Trump and his staff weren’t on the same page — and MOST IMPORTANTLY, as another example of Trump not listening to his staff or simply being an all-purpose simpleton who doesn’t understand what is involved.”

    Mollie Hemmingway wrote, essentially, the same thing in her recent response to this matter.

    bendover (8c9eab)

  62. swc pointed out yesterday that none of the other media organizations who reported on Pottinger’s briefing used the word “impossible.” He argued (my paraphrase; I stand ready to be corrected on it) that the NYT in particular is trying to promote a narrative whose gist is that Trump is recklessly out of touch with his own advisers, and that the failure of the other media to similarly paraphrase Pottinger’s estimation of the probability of the June 12th summit going forward as “impossible” is somehow evidence of the NYT’s malignant motive and intent.

    I simultaneously believe, however, that the NYT is out to promote that narrative, and that it’s largely true, and that this episode indeed demonstrates it. But put that aside for the moment.

    Many of the media organizations who didn’t use the word “impossible” are surely as anti-Trump as the NYT. CNN probably would object if any other media organization claimed to be more anti-Trump than CNN is! The modern (and either better hidden or less formal) version of Journolist wasn’t pushing the “impossible meme,” or others would have certainly been on board.

    And even though they’re sharp-elbowed competitors of one another, and even though there were conservative media organizations participating in the briefing who’d have every motive to call out the NYT, none of them reacted to the NYT’s use of “impossible” in the way that Trump did. None of them spontaneously cried, “Fake news!” All of them missed the internet clicks that such a story might have generated.

    Only Trump himself claimed that this was fake news from a nonexistent source. Once he did so, and once he got pushback on it, the loyal droogs like Mollie Hemmingway did their very best to deflect or recharacterize what Trump actually tweeted; but why didn’t any of them call out the NYT before Trump did?

    I submit it’s because none of them, including the conservative media, thought the difference between “practically impossible” (which would have been a very fair paraphrase) and “impossible” (which the NYT used) was worth fussing about.

    Beldar (fa637a)

  63. What the New York Times wrote was:

    https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/25/world/asia/trump-summit-north-korea.html

    On Thursday, for example, a senior White House official told reporters that even if the meeting were reinstated, holding it on June 12 would be impossible, given the lack of time and the amount of planning needed.

    What Trump wrote was:

    The Failing ‪@nytimes‬ quotes “a senior White House official,” who doesn’t exist, as saying “even if the meeting were reinstated, holding it on June 12 would be impossible, given the lack of time and the amount of planning needed.” WRONG AGAIN! Use real people, not phony sources.

    Now the problem is that in fact a real source, who was a senior White House official, said something, but not quite what the New York Times said he said (and, what’s more, Trump (and others) feel that the “impossible” may very well happen!)

    The thing is, though, that Trump doesn’t actually know for sure that the New York Times merely misconstrued or misdescribed what a real person said, rather than inventing both the
    person and the information.

    But maybe he likes it better that way.

    Sammy Finkelman (02a146)

  64. “I submit it’s because none of them, including the conservative media, thought the difference between “practically impossible” (which would have been a very fair paraphrase) and “impossible” (which the NYT used) was worth fussing about.”

    …and yet, all the MSM and NTs are ready to go to the mat over this item that’s not “worth fussing over”

    bendover (8c9eab)

  65. Sorry …. let me be clear … not “worth fussing about.”

    I wouldn’t want to misquote you.

    bendover (8c9eab)

  66. Here is what the co-author of the New York Times article said on Face the Nstion this Sunday:

    https://www.cbsnews.com/news/full-transcript-face-the-nation-on-may-27-2018

    BRENNAN: Time now for some political analysis.

    Mark Landler is a White House correspondent at “The New York Times.” Susan Glasser has a new job since last time we saw her. She now writes the column “Trump’s Washington” for “The New Yorker.” Ramesh Ponnuru is a senior editor at “The National Review,” a columnist for “Bloomberg View,” and a visiting fellow at the American Enterprise Institute….

    …BRENNAN: Mark Landler, I want to give you a chance to respond to the president’s tweets, because they have been about your story that you co-wrote with your colleague, David Sanger, where he is calling into question some of your White House sources and whether they exist.

    MARK LANDLER, “THE NEW YORK TIMES”: Well, thank you, Margaret.

    The president tweeted yesterday that we, in a sense — in essence made up a source. And the — the issue at question was, would the president be ready to go to Singapore for a June 12th summit with Kim Jong-un. Last week, on the day the president pulled out, when he sent his letter to Chairman Kim, there was a background briefing held at the White House in the Briefing Room. A senior official briefed from the podium and was asked that question. And the answer he gave was, we have lost a lot of time. There’s a lot of work to be done. June 12th is ten minutes from now. And I wrote that this official basically was saying it was impossible to prepare properly for a meeting on June 12th.

    So the president, you know, tweeted that this person doesn’t exist. Well, he not only exists, he works for the president.

    So I think there’s two issues. One, the obvious issue, the president either doesn’t know or doesn’t care what other members of his administration are saying. I do think it raises a valid question about the whole notion of background briefings. These are a very well-entrenched Washington custom where you go listen to an official and you don’t quote that official by name. We’ve had long had debates about this internally.

    At this meeting, as at most other background sections, a reporter did say, can we put this on the record? The White House said, no. But if you were to hold these meetings on the record or insist on that, there would be far more accountability you wouldn’t necessarily have this kind of strange back and forth that we’ve had this week.

    BRENNAN: And it has been a strange run.

    I think MArk Landler was going to add that they made a mistake but he got cut off before he could.

    You might note that word “basically” that I italicized.

    It’s not in the article.

    Sammy Finkelman (02a146)

  67. Hemmingway, by the way, ought to change her middle name to “Quisling.”

    Beldar (fa637a)

  68. @ bendover, who wrote (#68):

    [A]nd yet, all the MSM and NTs are ready to go to the mat over this item that’s not “worth fussing over.”

    Only after Trump made it a big deal, and his supporters made it a bigger deal by stubbornly insisting that the absence of the word “impossible” from the transcript is absolutely, totally dispositive of everything, ever, period, now shut up.

    Beldar (fa637a)

  69. the sleazy poofter-trash at the treasonous CIA leaked a study to NBC yesterday in hopes of undermining the prospective talks

    happyfeet (28a91b)

  70. The New York times was trying to say that Trump was wrongly holding out hope that the summit could take place on June 12. And to this end they cited a “senior White House official” as sayinbg that “even if the meeting were reinstated, holding it on June 12 would be impossible.”

    The goal actually may have been trying to, in their minds, avoid misleading the Times’ readers that Trump was being reasonable in his statement that they might yet meet in Singapore on June 12.`

    Sammy Finkelman (02a146)

  71. (Thanks, bendover, by the way, for your very scrupulous attention to what I actually wrote (#69), bendover! Whether that’s because you’re naturally careful and fair, or because you’ve seen me complain about people who misquote me (hopefully only over things much more material than the difference between “about” or “over”), I commend your attention to detail.)

    Beldar (fa637a)

  72. Sammy,
    Now the problem is that in fact a real source, who was a senior White House official, said something, but not quite what the New York Times said he said (and, what’s more, Trump (and others) feel that the “impossible” may very well happen!)

    The way I read Trump’s tweet, and again don’t understand why ANY of this is so hair-on-fire, is the “senior White House official,” who doesn’t exist” is tied to the “Use real people, not phony sources” part at the end. I don’t think that’s such a difficult way to read it. I don’t think it requires one to stand on one’s head and squint real hard. And still, so what? What is the big deal here?

    The thing is, though, that Trump doesn’t actually know for sure that the New York Times merely misconstrued or misdescribed what a real person said

    How do you know that? As has been said here, no other media outlet used that term. That doesn’t mean it wasn’t used. But again, so what?

    TBH, I really wasn’t paying much attention to this story, it was the gambling interest that pulled me in. But as this has gone on soooo looooong, and I caught some minor flack for following Beldar off topic, my curiosity got the better of me. This isn’t that complicated. This is a very simple thing as twitter goes. It’s not like every word that falls from PDT’s mouth is to be taken as some sort of refined law. The man is not a lawyer. That’s what many of us like about him. But that’s beside the point. There is nothing here to get all excited about.

    Skorcher (ac561d)

  73. Trump could even have the excuse of perhaps having asked his press secretary and others if anybody actually said that, and being told that nobody said it was impossible.

    But still he really should know better. That doesn’t mean that a source was made up.

    he shoudl know tghat doesn’t mean tha,t just like he should know, or have known, that Christopher Steele had real Russian sources for what’s in his dossier and didn’t make it up because Trump ((or at least others have in the past) also accused the dossier of having been made up out of whole cloth.

    Trump does this a lot. It’s always a dishonest reporter with a fake source, not even a lying source, or a misquoted source.

    (Now in the cvase of teh steele dossier saying it was all fake was more reasonable because to think that that was real Russian disinformation (and Trump knew it was disinformation) he’d have to think that Putin was trying to hurt him when everyone knows he was trying to help him get elected.

    It’s a puzzle unless you realize that the Russians didn’t know that Steele was working for the Democrats, or any Americans, but most likely thought he was working for somebody British. So it would be a nice strategy, and also a way to push off their curiosity, to offer a lot of false explanations as to why Putin wanted to see Trump elected, e.g. he was being blackmailed, or he had a lot of longstanding connections to Russia.

    But the real reason probably was that they had hopes of penetrating teh campaign, and, more imoportant, a future Trump Administration.

    They had already gotten Mike Flynn, whom Obama had fired because of suspicions he had been recruited by the GRU while he was head of the DIA, into a role as Trump’s chief national security adviser.)

    That’s all Obama did with a possible Russian spy. Fired him, and let the matter drop.

    Sammy Finkelman (02a146)

  74. And since this has come up again:
    One, the obvious issue, the president either doesn’t know or doesn’t care what other members of his administration are saying. I do think it raises a valid question about the whole notion of background briefings.

    That’s quite a jump. Based on this one thing, he doesn’t know or doesn’t care what others are saying. Really? You do understand that there’s more BS and lies in that statement, said on a Sunday news talk show, than in Trump’s tweet?

    Skorcher (ac561d)

  75. Sammy, you are a voracious reader of the NYT, I commend you on that. As such, I am sure that over your lifetime, you have a “sixth sense” of what the Times (or any paper for that matter) is trying to get their readers to infer from a published article.

    NYT – “As with so many issues involving this president, the views of his aides often have little effect on what he actually says. On Thursday, for example, a senior White House official told reporters that even if the meeting were reinstated, holding it on June 12 would be impossible, given the lack of time and the amount of planning needed.”

    “On Friday, Mr. Trump said, ‘It could even be the 12th.’”

    Knowing what you know – what are your thoughts as to what the Times article was trying to imply to their readers ?

    bendover (8c9eab)

  76. It’s always a dishonest reporter with a fake source, not even a lying source, or a misquoted source.

    I’ve caught the media making up fake sources and misquoted sources several times in my life now. And I don’t live/die by what gets reported about me (mostly because I’m nobody, but still). I’ve read many, many stories over the years where I know such things as reported simply could not have happened because i know the subject matter and I know that’s not how things work. The Gell-Mann effect. Is it not possible Trump had a convo and was told it was not likely to happen and he asked “but is it impossible” and told no and thus he “knew” that whomever spoke would not have said it was “impossible”. That is certainly a possible scenario, is it not? Not saying it went down that way but why all the hair-on-fire if it didn’t? This whole “controversy” is nuts.

    Skorcher (ac561d)

  77. 76. Skorcher (ac561d) — 5/30/2018 @ 11:47 am

    The thing is, though, that Trump doesn’t actually know for sure that the New York Times merely misconstrued or misdescribed what a real person said

    Skorcher: How do you know that? As has been said here, no other media outlet used that term.

    Unless Trump could trace the New York Times version to something that was actually said, Trump couldn’t know that this wasn’t totally made up. Now he should know that that wasn’t too likely; the New York Times is not tha National Enquirer, and even the National Enquirer doesn’t do that, but he couldn’t know that it was a misconstruction of what a real source said.

    If you mean how do I know that the New York Times misconstrued or misdescribed what somebody really said, we now have the audio and transcript, and some of what the New York Times said is very similar. It’s clear that the source didn’t wnat to say that he couldn’t see how they could meet the June 12 date, but that he basically thought so.

    Sammy Finkelman (02a146)

  78. Skorcher:

    As has been said here, no other media outlet used that term. [impossible] That doesn’t mean it wasn’t used.

    We actually know that the word “impossible” wasn’t used because we know what was the briefing where the New York TYtimes and other reporters got their information from and we have an audio and transcript

    https://twitter.com/yashar/status/1000418699273175044.

    https://www.cnn.com/2018/05/27/politics/transcript-white-house-background-briefing/index.html?iid=EL

    The word “impossible” does nmot appear. The word “possible” does:

    What may be news to you is that Secretary Pompeo and the South Korean government were promised by the North Koreans that international experts and officials would be invited to witness and verify today’s demolition. But that promise was broken.

    Instead, journalists were invited and we will not have forensic evidence that much was accomplished. It’s possible that the tunnels were detonated in a way that will still allow them to be used in the future. And I think Ben Tracy of CBS News said it best.

    I just saw a report he filed. He said quote “the problem is we’re journalists. We’re not nuclear experts, so there was no one on site, no outside expert to verify that what North Korea claims it has done, closing its nuclear test site, has actually occurred.”

    Sammy Finkelman (02a146)

  79. Trump couldn’t know that this wasn’t totally made up.

    No. And none of us really know if any of this actually happened. All sorts of possibilities exist. But given my scenario, that it was entirely possible that he may have directly stated or even asked members of his staff if this was possible or impossible and this was argued in such a manner that he was quite clear when he last spoke with his staff that it was understood that it was still possible, is this not just as likely a scenario as your excuse for the NYT reporting differently from other MSM sources?

    And AGAIN, we are way off in the weeds. It has pretty much been conceded that there was no one who said the word “impossible” in this context. And if somebody DID screw up and accidentally say “impossible” when they knew they shouldn’t have, freudian slip or some such, so what? This is all between Trump and his staff. This isn’t a constitutional crisis. Let it go.

    Skorcher (ac561d)

  80. Skorcher (ac561d) — 5/30/2018 @ 11:47 am

    It’s not like every word that falls from PDT’s mouth is to be taken as some sort of refined law. The man is not a lawyer. That’s what many of us like about him. But that’s beside the point. There is nothing here to get all excited about.

    Except fopr the fact that trumo was very unfair in accusing the New York times of having made up a source. Taht was not their error. And Landler says if it hadn’t been on background, they’d have named the person, and Trump could check. (it was done on background tso as not to step on Trump’s words)

    Sammy Finkelman (02a146)

  81. I’m speculating, obviously, but I imagine the scenario went something like this:

    (1) Trump read the NYT article, and took offense at the argument that he’s out of touch with his senior WH staff, which is indeed a serious criticism.

    (2) Trump instructed someone to review an audio recording of the briefing (which surely the WH staff makes and keeps just in case there is a dispute about what was said) to see whether Pottinger used the word “impossible.”

    (3) The so-instructed staffer (which might have been Pottinger himself) did so, and confirmed that the word “impossible” was never used. (The staffer may or may not have provided a full quote of the entire question and answer; regardless, it’s reasonable to presume that the full quote was available to Trump if he cared about more than just whether the word “impossible” was used.)

    (4) Trump composes and transmits his tweet, thereby turning this from a nothing-burger into something important enough for the POTUS to tweet about. But he doesn’t just point out that Pottinger never used the word “impossible.” And he doesn’t contradict Pottinger either directly or indirectly regarding the likelihood of the summit actually happening on June 12. Instead, he accuses the NYT of a misleading quote (it wasn’t a quote) from a non-existent, fake news source (it was a real source who was authorized to speak, but who didn’t use the exact word “impossible”).

    It’s item (4) that makes this worth discussing at length. It’s controversial and disputed and depends on Trump’s mental processes and truthfulness, not the NYT’s.

    Beldar (fa637a)

  82. The word “impossible” does nmot appear. The word “possible” does:

    Overran my post…OK. So, we agree…point again?

    Skorcher (ac561d)

  83. @68. Flight 401.

    DCSCA (797bc0)

  84. Except fopr the fact that trumo was very unfair in accusing the New York times of having made up a source.

    Look, it’s unfair that you and narcisco make the rest of us wade through your horrible spellings. But I understand if there’s a problem I’m unaware of. Or not. Perhaps I’m being “unfair”. The media makes up sources frequently. In the context, it’s not like Trump is leveling an indictment. It’s just a thing he tweeted. And it appears he was right about the attacks from the NYT, using this nonsense as a basis, were totally unwarranted. AGAIN, so what? Why is this still being argued? We agree that “impossible” was never said. The whole basis of this is unfounded.

    Skorcher (ac561d)

  85. this one time i saw where Paula Abdul did a video where she was dancing with a cartoon cat and that was a choice she made on purpose

    The New York Times on the other hand chose to just flat out LIE and say that the spokesman said all this stuff he never actually said, and this was a choice the NYT made on purpose

    it’s like how Disney decided to make Han Solo a pussy – on purpose

    happyfeet (28a91b)

  86. It is a “nothing-burger(4)” when the NYT argues that The President “is out of touch with his senior WH staff, which is indeed a serious criticism.(1)”

    IOW, “a serious criticism” is a “nothing-burger.”

    I see.

    BuDuh (fc15db)

  87. 85. Skorcher (ac561d) — 5/30/2018 @ 12:15 pm

    as your excuse for the NYT reporting differently from other MSM sources?

    I don’t excuse it. They were wrong. But I think I can see whay they did it. They didn’t want to leave Donald Trump’s words standing because they thought they were worng. But they shouldn’t have bene so convinced.

    They tried to cite some Administration source as saying that it couldn’t take place on June 12 – but nobody actually said that.

    And AGAIN, we are way off in the weeds. It has pretty much been conceded that there was no one who said the word “impossible” in this context. And if somebody DID screw up and accidentally say “impossible” when they knew they shouldn’t have, freudian slip or some such, so what?

    Sometimes it’s important, or at least interesting, to run things down.

    This is all between Trump and his staff. This isn’t a constitutional crisis.

    It’s not between him and his staff, unless somebody was too emmphatic in saying they never said anything like that. It;s between Trump and the New York Times.

    Now we have this issue; Will the meeting in fact take place on June 12, against all of some people’s expectatiosn? It’s very likely it will.

    Trump doesn’t need to prepare. He’s been doing that for some time. If it happens later, he’ll just ahgve to carve out more time from his schedule. It’s the logistics, and perhaps some preliminary discussions – I mean they’d like to have that – that need some work. But I am not sure hwow much Trump cares. he may care that the United SZtates and its officials do not get insulted, but he’s perfectly prepared to wait until he speakes to Kim Jong Un. the South Korean president will probably also be there, so that Kim Jong Un won’t be able to say different things to each one of them. That’s one thing worth doing.

    and he’s just gotten tough again on China.

    Sammy Finkelman (02a146)

  88. “50. If Trump had tweeted, “the WH official referenced by the NYT never used the word ‘impossible,’” and he’d left it at that, Trump would have been absolutely justified and righteous. ”

    Skorcher had it right in # 42: “There is no person who exists who said that the meeting was “impossible”. There is nothing else to argue about. ”

    You guys are funny. Why do you think that Trump must speak in the manner that you think he should speak?

    I get that people sometimes get all hung up on being pedantic, but this is ridiculous.

    “57. It was Trump who turned this into a big deal. He deliberately chose to make it into a big deal.”
    Another example of the power of Trump. He makes one tweek and the internet goes wild. Actually, not most of the internet……just Patterico’s blog.
    Meanwhile, Trump goes about his business while his adversaries obsess over trivialities.

    How does it feel to be a cat chasing after a laser pointer?

    fred-2 (ce04f3)

  89. Really has she leaked classified info, repeated enemy propaganda, now I’ll conceded that haberman was repeating insinuations she probably got thirdhand from mcmaster or tillerson or their assistants, it just seems silly if the Korean version of let duc tho is here, the summit will not come off.

    narciso (d1f714)

  90. 88. Skorcher (ac561d) — 5/30/2018 @ 12:22 pm

    The media makes up sources frequently.

    I don’t know if that’s really the case. To do so, could subject a media organziation someone to a libel suit if the quote was held to be defamatory, because that would meet the criterion for malice in New York Times v. Sullivan.

    Now misdescribing a source, using themselves as asource, being fooled by a source, quoting a source nobody would usually credit, that’s something else.

    Sammy Finkelman (02a146)

  91. Trump fans complaining about the sexual abuses of Bush 41 are as amusing as Trump fans complaining about the dishonesty of a slightly exaggerated paraphrase. In other news, the sun is complaining that I have the AC turned to an unbearably warm 80.

    Dustin (ba94b2)

  92. Sammy,
    I’m good with that.

    So here’s my more general question regarding the spam, trump, turnips, and trump droning. If we really all want to get along (we do, right?), why dwell so much on the things (thing) that divide us and more on the lying media, the corrupt academic institutions that suck up our tax dollars, and the other wasteful spending nonsense? How about a thousand point on that stuff?

    Skorcher (ac561d)

  93. it’s muggy here we were promised raindrops from alfredo but guess what they lied

    happyfeet (28a91b)

  94. Yes we recall when they surfaced the rumors about Jennifer Fitzgerald, there is some speculation that Linda trip helped spread, they were in Kurt Anderson’s spy magazine. I remember the October surprise, the christic foolishness spread by now congressional candidate Leslie cockburn

    narciso (d1f714)

  95. TBC, I was cool with 5/30/2018 @ 12:26 pm

    As for 12:30, who got sued when W was libeled by CBS? And those weren’t entirely anonymous sources. I have frequently seen unnamed sources used in stories. It doesn’t need to lead to a libel case. Most frequently “background”. Hell, practically every story out of DC rides on “sources say”. Nobody checks all that stuff out. If you read a DC oriented story and take out every unnamed source, there’s rarely much left but the headline. Fabulists have made careers (or semi-careers) out of this. TNR got hit not once but twice. That Stephen Glass thing was absurd. I remember reading his articles and saying to myself that there was no way things went down that way. But no one questioned him until he finally hit the wrong vein. Forget what broke him but I do recall it being rather insignificant relative to the whoppers he was telling in other stories.

    Skorcher (ac561d)

  96. 85. Beldar (fa637a) — 5/30/2018 @ 12:16 pm

    I’m speculating, obviously, but I imagine the scenario went something like this:

    (1) Trump read the NYT article, and took offense at the argument that he’s out of touch with his senior WH staff, which is indeed a serious criticism.

    Most actually he didn’t read the New York Times article, unless somebody first gave it to him, but got the information from asecondary source. And what bothered him was the contradiction of his claim that the meeting could take place on June 12.

    (2) Trump instructed someone to review an audio recording of the briefing (which surely the WH staff makes and keeps just in case there is a dispute about what was said) to see whether Pottinger used the word “impossible.”

    Nothing like that. The New York Times did not sday where they got the information from. Nowhere did the New York Times say this came from an official, recorded, briefing. It could have been by telephone, or by speaking to someone in the hall (not that I think they get the chance very much.)

    (3) The so-instructed staffer (which might have been Pottinger himself) did so, and confirmed that the word “impossible” was never used. (The staffer may or may not have provided a full quote of the entire question and answer; regardless, it’s reasonable to presume that the full quote was available to Trump if he cared about more than just whether the word “impossible” was used.)

    I don’t think Trump traced the source. That was partially the point.

    I think he may have asked his press office to check around with Whte House officials and ask if anyone there ever said anything like that to the New York Times, and it’s probable that, among other things, they checked that transcript and listened to the audio (in that order).

    (4) Trump composes and transmits his tweet, thereby turning this from a nothing-burger into something important enough for the POTUS to tweet about. But he doesn’t just point out that Pottinger never used the word “impossible.” And he doesn’t contradict Pottinger either directly or indirectly regarding the likelihood of the summit actually happening on June 12. Instead, he accuses the NYT of a misleading quote (it wasn’t a quote) from a non-existent, fake news source (it was a real source who was authorized to speak, but who didn’t use the exact word “impossible”).

    Trump chooses to make his accusation as bad as possible. After the New York Times identifies where they got it from, the White House staff puts out a transcript of the briefing and traces the probable actual words the New York Times relied upon. Till then, they really don’t know it came from the briefing because the New York Times never indicated that in its story.

    Sammy Finkelman (02a146)

  97. The New Yor Times story references several different officials, but not necessarily the same one who suppoedly said the word impossible:

    The White House still has plans to send an advance team to Singapore over the Memorial Day weekend to work out details for a meeting between the two leaders, according to a person briefed on the matter. A similar team waited in Singapore for three days last week, only to be stood up by the North Koreans — a factor cited by officials in judging that North Korea was not serious about the negotiation…

    And:

    Mr. Bolton, several officials said, is not trying to maneuver against a meeting, in part because he knows it is important to Mr. Trump.

    Sammy Finkelman (02a146)

  98. The transcript (posted by CNN) wasn’t made by teh White House but by the commercial transcription service FDCH.

    Sammy Finkelman (02a146)

  99. @ Bu-Duh: That the NYT may have once again, on this occasion, sacrificed accuracy in pursuit of its anti-Trump agenda is indeed a nothing-burger: The difference between the summit taking place on June 12 or June 19 or June 29 isn’t a big deal, and the difference between “impossible” and “practically impossible” (or whatever paraphrase you think is fair) isn’t a big deal. That the NYT and other media are reflexively biased and that it affects their reporting is a big deal, but this is a very minor and equivocal example of that, in comparison to their other journalistic sins.

    I repeat, the POTUS elevated the importance of this, very deliberately. And he was dishonest in how he did it.

    Beldar (fa637a)

  100. @ fred-2 (#92): I dunno about cats and laser pointers. But how does it feel to be defending a POTUS who’s a liar?

    Beldar (fa637a)

  101. I think Trump made the most inflammatory charge possible because he wants to hurt the reputation of the media in general. It has a grain of truth, NYT said ‘impossible’ when ‘nearly impossible’ would have been more accurate. So people who really want him to be right can make some argument that he was and he still gets level a more damaging claim, that his media critics make things up about him.
    I can’t prove this, but it makes sense to me and is in line with other publicly available facts.
    I think his more level-headed supporters have said “He over stated his claim” and moved on.

    Time123 (a7a01b)

  102. And yet hes still president

    EPWJ (db4190)

  103. I’m glad President Trump pointed out about the fake sources.

    We’d have never known!

    And now we know the NYT just makes stuff up that never happened.

    Thanks to President Trump, now we know.

    happyfeet (28a91b)

  104. And now we know the NYT just makes stuff up that never happened.

    Now? Where you been?

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jayson_Blair

    Skorcher (ac561d)

  105. @ Time123, who wrote:

    I think his [Trump’s] more level-headed supporters have said “He over stated his claim” and moved on.

    Gosh, I hope you’re right. It’s a pity so few level-headed Trump supporters comment here.

    Beldar (fa637a)

  106. Nobody said impossible and nobodies do not exist.

    If I was in the “Jury that talks back” and I was reading your arguments above I’d be shaking my head and muttering “wtf” is this guy complicating simple facts; nobody said impossible. a nobody is nonexistent

    steveg (a9dcab)

  107. Here’s another place where the take of somebody at the New York Times is ..not quite right.

    Trump actually said in a speech that he doesn’t always say what he really believes. I’ll show you what I mean.

    From Gail Collins’ column last Thirsday:

    https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/23/opinion/how-trump-gets-into-your-bed.html

    “Your vote in 2018 is every bit as important as your vote in 2016,” he read from his prepared text. Then added, “Although I’m not sure I really believe that.”

    Now what Trump was doing there was recognizing most people would not believe that.

    No matter what you say, the midterm election is not as important as the presidential election.

    But Gail Collins has to make this into a more damaging accusation against Trump. So her comment is:

    No, nothing is as important as Donald Trump winning the presidency. The signing of the Declaration of Independence, two world wars, the invention of the printing press … details, details.

    Instead of giving Trump credit here for a little bit of honesty (albeit probably forced by his realization of the absurdity of that statement that the midterms are as important as the presidential election) she makes it into an illustration of his narcissism.

    But it’s right! No matter what you say, the presidential election of 2020 is a more important election tyhan the midterms of 2018.

    Sammy Finkelman (02a146)

  108. 57 — Beldar continuing to ignore the point.

    Yes, the NYT not putting a qualifier before “impossible, not a huge journalistic sin — when considered in a vacuum.

    But, the editorial choice wasn’t made in a vacuum.

    The narrative of the article is that Trump wasn’t listening to his staff, and was clueless about why summit was “impossible”. By using the definitive “impossible” to mischaracterize what the official said, the juxtaposed it with Trump’s comment in the very next sentence where he said “Maybe even on June 12”.

    If they had qualified “impossible” to make it consistent with what the official actually said, it would have undercut the narrative, as Trump’s comment and the official’s comment would have been in line with one another.

    Why do I think this was not accidental? Because the “Trump’s oblivious” is a narrative they have pushed as an editorial decision since the day he was inaugurated.

    But don’t trust me, trust the sympathetic views of Benjamin Wittes in his column today on a newly released documentary called “The Fourth Estate”, on the coverage of Trump by the NYT in his first year — which is a “fly-on-the-wall” look at the daily process of putting together the coverage of Trump in the NY and Wash DC offices of the NYT. Quoting Wittes on the way the NYT is shown:

    It is an institution that argues over the use of specific words, that checks and rechecks facts before publishing, that hates getting beat on a story but prefers getting beat to being wrong.

    No accident.

    shipwreckedcrew (56b591)

  109. 66 — Beldar

    I simultaneously believe, however, that the NYT is out to promote that narrative, and that it’s largely true, and that this episode indeed demonstrates it. But put that aside for the moment.

    There it is — justification for the NYT mischaracterization based on the fact that the point the NYT arrived at was “largely true.”

    And even though they’re sharp-elbowed competitors of one another, and even though there were conservative media organizations participating in the briefing who’d have every motive to call out the NYT, none of them reacted to the NYT’s use of “impossible” in the way that Trump did.

    And none of them had a comment of their own quoted in the next sentence after the mischaracterization for the purpose of establishing a conflict between Trump and his staffer THAT DIDN’T EXIST.

    I’ve never really liked the phrase “fake news”, but I’d be hard pressed to find a better example.

    1. Trump staffer never said June 12 was impossible.
    2. Trump says June 12 is still possible.
    3. NYT mischaracterizes staffer’s comment so it’s inconsistent with Trump’s comment.
    4. NYT reports — as the central feature of the story — that Trump is commonly at odds with his staff in terms of his view of events.

    shipwreckedcrew (56b591)

  110. Donald J. Trump
    @realDonaldTrump
    ·
    6h
    The Failing and Corrupt @nytimes estimated the crowd last night at “1000 people,” when in fact it was many times that number – and the arena was rockin’. This is the way they demean and disparage. They are very dishonest people who don’t “get” me, and never did!

    Julie Davis
    @juliehdavis

    President @realDonaldTrump is correct about his crowd last night. My estimate was way off, and we have corrected our story to reflect the fire marshal’s estimate of 5,500 people. When we get it wrong, we say so. (link: https://nyti.ms/2H2ETXo) nyti.ms/2H2ETXo

    https://mobile.twitter.com/juliehdavis/status/1001875410311933952

    Surprised?

    BuDuh (09e357)

  111. 113. shipwreckedcrew (56b591) — 5/30/2018 @ 2:09 pm

    If they had qualified “impossible” to make it consistent with what the official actually said, it would have undercut the narrative, as Trump’s comment and the official’s comment would have been in line with one another. It’s

    “It could even be the 12th.” And

    We are having very productive talks with North Korea about reinstating the Summit which, if it does happen, will likely remain in Singapore on the same date, June 12th., and, if necessary, will be extended beyond that date.

    Is he saying that it’s possible that June 12th could still — could still happen?

    SENIOR WHITE HOUSE OFFICIAL: That — that — that’s —

    QUESTION: (Inaudible).

    SENIOR WHITE HOUSE OFFICIAL: — I think that the main point, I suppose, is that — that the ball is in North Korea’s court right now, and there — there’s really not a lot of time. We’ve — we’ve lost quite a bit of time that we would need in order to — I mean there’s been an enormous amount of preparation that’s gone on over the past few months at the White House, at State and — and with other agencies and so forth.

    But there’s a certain amount of actual dialogue that needs — needs to take place at the working level with your counterparts to ensure that the agenda is clear in the — in the minds of those two leaders when they sit down to actually — and talk, and — and negotiate, and — and hopefully, make a deal. And June 12th is in — in 10 minutes, and it’s going to be, you know…

    But the president has said that he — he has — some day, that he looks forward to — to meeting with Kim.

    Sammy Finkelman (02a146)

  112. 85 — Beldar:

    (1) Trump read the NYT article, and took offense at the argument that he’s out of touch with his senior WH staff, which is indeed a serious criticism.

    You left out the part of the NYT mischaracterizing the staff in order to make it LOOK like he’s out of touch with his WH staff.

    But, you dismiss it as no big deal.

    IMO, the combination of the 90% hostile press that covers him on a daily basis, and the parts of his own party that refuse to accept that they would cover him in a similar hostile fashion if he was Ronald Reagan reincarnated, make it a HUGELY important story while elevates his detractors and suppresses his support.

    Is that what you’re hoping to see?

    shipwreckedcrew (56b591)

  113. That wasn’t quite formatted right, but you can see the two things Trump said and what the official said. The official is skeptical that the June 12 date could be met, but there is no contradiction.

    By the way, here is somebody at Commentary writing today, saying, I think, not so much that the summit won’t happen,even though the headline is Donald Trump’s North Korea Summit Is Unsalvageable but that it would be a failure:

    https://www.commentarymagazine.com/foreign-policy/asia/north-korea/donald-trumps-north-korea-debacle/

    Q. Why are they so sure that Trump would agree to something that all of his appointees think is stupid?

    Sammy Finkelman (02a146)

  114. Times123 @ 105 —

    I think Trump made the most inflammatory charge possible because he wants to hurt the reputation of the media in general. It has a grain of truth, NYT said ‘impossible’ when ‘nearly impossible’ would have been more accurate. So people who really want him to be right can make some argument that he was and he still gets level a more damaging claim, that his media critics make things up about him.

    I think this is likely true. Trump is trolling the NYT here, as he has done often in the past 16 months.

    He’s had decades of becoming “comfortable” with unflattering press coverage, and he’s responding as he always has — by punching back.

    It’s a hostile press — it’s no different than the press faced by Reagan, Bush 41 and Bush 43.

    But the nature of the media in the age of the internet is completely different than what any of the last 3 GOP presidents faced.

    His use of Twitter — accurately or inaccurately — enrages them further because it undercuts they value of their reporting with all but their own “true believers”.

    The First Amendment stands for the proposition that the citizenry can print anything they want (for the most part) without fear of Gov’t imposed prior restraint.

    It does NOT protect them from criticism in the “court of public opinion” for what they have written after they hit the “send” button.

    shipwreckedcrew (56b591)

  115. How do we know the external world is real at all? Therefore, it’s not absolutely provable that this so-called WH Official exists.

    Dustin (b1b43a)

  116. Technically, the White House has many other colors on its surface, particularly the interior surfaces. Therefore, from a certain point of view, it’s not really a lie to say “White House” officials do not exist.

    Dustin (b1b43a)

  117. Earlier today President Trump signed S. 204, the “Right to Try Act”. The legislation provides terminally ill patients with the right to try experimental medicine and medical procedures. Detail: authorizes certain patients to seek access to certain unapproved investigational drugs directly from a drug sponsor or manufacturer; limits the use of clinical outcomes and liability arising from the provision of such drugs; and provides reporting requirements for the use and outcomes of the new authority.

    https://theconservativetreehouse.com/2018/05/30/president-trump-signs-right-to-try-legislation/

    His enemies fuss about his tweets, all the while he just keeps chugging along.

    Anon Y. Mous (6cc438)

  118. How can a White House official exist if he does not officiate a single sports competition? The burden of proof is on the NCAA/NYT to prove his existence to the supposed jury. Not an official? Then technically nonexistent.

    Dustin (b1b43a)

  119. Here is Trump again today, attacking the New York Times:

    https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1001834394359877633

    Donald J. Trump realDonaldTrump

    The Failing and Corrupt @nytimes estimated the crowd last night at “1000 people,” when in fact it was many times that number – and the arena was rockin’. This is the way they demean and disparage. They are very dishonest people who don’t “get” me, and never did!

    7:35 AM – 30 May 2018

    I don’t know what’s true.

    Here he thinks he has a something against Democrats

    https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1001404640796336128

    Donald J. Trump‏Verified account @realDonaldTrump

    Democrats mistakenly tweet 2014 pictures from Obama’s term showing children from the Border in steel cages. They thought it was recent pictures in order to make us look bad, but backfires. Dems must agree to Wall and new Border Protection for good of country…Bipartisan Bill! 3:07 AM – 29 May 2018

    Of course, on a larger scale he’s denying he’s responsible for a policy that he is responsible for.

    http://www.nydailynews.com/newswires/news/national/false-accusations-immigration-fly-opponents-article-1.4016422

    The White House on Tuesday wrongly blamed Democrats for forcing Trump’s administration to separate children from parents. Liberal activists and others, including some from media outlets, tried to highlight the issue by tweeting photos of young people in steel cages that actually were taken during the Obama administration. Others seized on reports the government had “lost” more than 1,000 children, though that wasn’t quite the case…”He actually called the practice horrible. If he thinks it’s so horrible then he ought to just end it and not make the children a negotiating tool,” said Lee Gelernt, deputy director of the American Civil Liberties Union’s Immigrants’ Rights Project.

    Sammy Finkelman (02a146)

  120. The Right to Try bill is good, but not goods enough. Many companies may not even take advantage of it, although his FDA is a little kinder. And this does not get to generics or unpatentable drugs or drugs others own.

    Sammy Finkelman (02a146)

  121. Earlier today President Trump signed S. 204, the “Right to Try Act”. The legislation provides terminally ill patients with the right to try experimental medicine and medical procedures. Detail: authorizes certain patients to seek access to certain unapproved investigational drugs directly from a drug sponsor or manufacturer; limits the use of clinical outcomes and liability arising from the provision of such drugs; and provides reporting requirements for the use and outcomes of the new authority.

    https://theconservativetreehouse.com/2018/05/30/president-trump-signs-right-to-try-legislation/

    His enemies fuss about his tweets, all the while he just keeps chugging along.

    Anon Y. Mous (6cc438) — 5/30/2018 @ 2:40 pm

    This is a great new law! Trump signed a bill that democrat Senators Manchin and Donnelly sponsored. I think it makes more sense to consider this bipartisan and relatively uncontroversial, but yeah, I agree with the bill’s purpose. People who are dying can try experimental medicine if they want.

    As far as “chugging along” Trump has been surprising even to his critics in his inability to deliver meaningful deals legislatively. On immigration, Obamacare, and spending, we might as well have elected Hillary. But those are the tough fights he promised to deliver results on, and he has objectively failed because he offered timelines for these initiatives that are long, long in the past.

    I understand that Trump’s behavior on twitter embarasses his supporters and they would like to change the subject to literally anything else, but Trump’s legislative accomplishments are actually worse than his hysterics on twitter.

    Dustin (b1b43a)

  122. Sammy, see 115.

    BuDuh (09e357)

  123. The Right to Try bill is good, but not goods enough. Many companies may not even take advantage of it, although his FDA is a little kinder. And this does not get to generics or unpatentable drugs or drugs others own.

    Sammy Finkelman

    Right. It’s a bumper sticker accomplishment. I still like the idea, but only for people who have exhausted all other options, and only for people proven terminal, and really not far reaching even if those two stipulations are met.

    But Trump is tweeting about how awesome he is for passing this, so apparently that means lying is OK, or whatever Anon.Y.Mous is trying to say.

    Dustin (b1b43a)

  124. It’s a pity so few level-headed Trump supporters comment here.

    Beldar (fa637a) — 5/30/2018 @ 1:41 pm

    His brrrrrrrrrrazen audacity is surpassed only by his insolence and bold effrontery. Do we dare mock one so impressed with himself?

    Colonel Haiku (e208fd)

  125. Trump signed a bill that democrat Senators Manchin and Donnelly sponsored.

    no it was sponsored by Ron Johnson from Wisconsin

    Manchin, Donnelly, John McCain and Angus King were the only 4 Democratic co-sponsors out of a total of 46

    happyfeet (28a91b)

  126. BTW, since this bill doesn’t really give me a “right to try” any drug I want, I insist that this bill doesn’t exist. Neither do the people talking about it. Their characterization that the bill gives me the right to try is an exaggeration, as I have to be a few minutes from death before I can start trying.

    Chalk that up as yet another broken promise!

    Dustin (b1b43a)

  127. sleazy cowardpig McCain didn’t bother to show up to vote though

    happyfeet (28a91b)

  128. Manchin, Donnelly, John McCain and Angus King were the only 4 Democratic co-sponsors out of a total of 46

    happyfeet

    Wow, 46 senators sponsored it? Sounds like an enormously uncontroversial bill that Trump is taking credit for. And it passed the Senate last summer? What was the vote? Oh yeah, unanimous consent.

    Great job Trump getting this bill through that firestorm of difficulty!

    Dustin (b1b43a)

  129. no they co-sponsored it there was only one sponsor

    that’s how things work

    happyfeet (28a91b)

  130. I better be careful about characterizing co-sponsors without the co or I might wind up phasing out of existence.

    Dustin (b1b43a)

  131. I’m in the quantum realm now. This is trippy.

    -WHERE DID I GO- (b1b43a)

  132. seeing as his daughter, jacked up the price of inhalers, as ceo of mylan, it was the least he could do,

    narciso (d1f714)

  133. it’s just important to be precise

    cause of this was a very partisan bill

    democrats do NOT want people to have the right to try

    why they gotta be like that

    happyfeet (28a91b)

  134. Well I mean, the unanimous consent in the Senate suggests they weren’t that worried about right to try. Granted it’s a deregulation at least a little bit so many democrats do disagree with it, but it’s a minimal improvement and a common sense good idea, which is probably why there was no real opposition.

    But what else have y’all got? If Trump had repealed Obamacare or gotten real conservative immigration reform I would definitely have to recognize twitter lies as in a context. But lying while being pathetic? Not a good look.

    Dustin (b1b43a)

  135. It’s off-topic, but I’m curious if DRJ might share her impressions regarding the “Right to Try” bill, as passed and just signed into law.

    Beldar (fa637a)

  136. @ swc (#117): I’ll tell you what I’m hoping to see.

    I’m hoping to see a POTUS who is at least more selective and infrequent in the lies he tells to the American public, who therefore gives the biased media less to complain about justifiably.

    And I’m hoping to see you refrain from ad hominem attacks on our host or other commenters.

    I’m not optimistic about either.

    Beldar (fa637a)

  137. so seeing as the mastermind of the cheonan sinking, why we can’t arrest hem when he arrives in new York is another matter, is on sight, one can reasonably conclude the kim dynast delegation is focused on seeing this through, now I’ve long since thought that the middleman general cheng, is too enthusiastic about it’s success,

    narciso (d1f714)

  138. narciso, I like the way you think. If Trump arrested Kim for crimes against humanity the moment he set foot on American soil I would donate to his reelection campaign.

    Dustin (b1b43a)

  139. Beldar #141

    DING, DING, DING

    Thank you, thank you … you never disappoint. You’ve just made the last of my predictions from post #15 come true.

    bendover (1b807d)

  140. 141 — “who therefore gives the biased media less to complain about justifiably.”

    LOL.

    You think they’d complain less???

    shipwreckedcrew (56b591)

  141. 145 — meant to add:

    What he gives them to complain about, and what they complain about, are not necessarily linked in the minds of the press.

    shipwreckedcrew (56b591)

  142. @ bendover: I appreciate your applause. swc is someone whom I hold to a different standard than I do other commenters here, and we have a history. I don’t know if you know it; I don’t know if you care. Since he, like most others here, comments anonymously (I don’t, but I blame no one for choosing to use a handle for privacy or other reasons), I don’t have any other way to communicate with him except through these comments. He recently made a gracious apology, which I promptly accepted; but now he’s backslid, at least as I see it. So while you’re welcome to comment on our interactions, I don’t particularly care what you think of them: He at one time had earned my respect, then forfeited most of that, then regained a bit, and now that’s back in doubt. You, I don’t know from Adam.

    Beldar (fa637a)

  143. Who therefore gives the biased media less to complain about justifiably.

    Yes. Because worrying about what you enemy thinks of you is so #winning. You really don’t understand the world, do you?

    Skorcher (ac561d)

  144. @ swc (#145): I don’t think they’d complain less. I think I’d agree with them less. In this instance, Trump is trying to hold out the prospect of a June 12th summit as being possible, while his senior adviser was very clear in throwing doubt upon that. There were tons of other media outlets who were pointing out that very same conflict, without using the word “impossible”; and that is, in fact, a legitimate story. Because I would like to see Trump succeed in negotiating with the Norks (despite my low expectations of him or them), I would like to see Trump and his advisers in sync in public, not in conflict, whether the specific word “impossible” is or isn’t used or qualified.

    Beldar (fa637a)

  145. @ Skorcher: When you’ve had some success in holding the NYT accountable for its mistruths late in a presidential campaign, get back to me and we’ll talk. Your suggestion that I care about what the NYT thinks of me — as if the NYT has ever known or cared anything about me, except on occasions in which I’ve embarrassed them sufficiently to extract grudging corrections like this one — confirms that you know next to nothing about me or what I care about.

    Beldar (fa637a)

  146. 71: Goose, gander.

    Anonymous (d41cee)

  147. 149:

    I would like to see Trump and his advisers in sync in public, not in conflict, whether the specific word “impossible” is or isn’t used or qualified.

    But they were in sync in public — Trump never said it was likely, he repeatedly discounted the prospects because he knew there had been a lack of planning. Several other administration officials — Pompeo, Mattis, Sanders — had similar views on the possibility of June 12 happening as previously planned.

    The one guy I put a ton of stock in with regards to knowing exactly where things stand on a day-to-day basis is Pompeo. And reports out of he Administration for 18 months are that Pompeo has the most respect from Trump out of all his Cabinet.

    I’m 100% sure Pompeo has kept Trump precisely up to date on where the preparations stood, what remained to be done, the chances for getting that done, and prospects for a successful outcome if the planning wasn’t fully accomplished before June 12.

    I also thing that Trump is prepared to go on less than perfect planning — with the understanding that not as much gets accomplished as a result.

    As I wrote in another post, based on what I’ve read about him, he believes that deals get made when the decision-makers are in the room together, and momentum is lost when opportunities are not pursued.

    Ok — June 12 is a very short window now that the Norks have decided to re-engage. So less gets done in advance, and less can be accomplished at Summit 1A. In Pottington’s mind, the needed planning can’t be accomplished in time. That’s what he said.

    BUT he doesn’t decide at the end of the day what constitutes “the needed planning.” Pompeo and Trump decide, and their view of what constitutes “V1” may not be the same as Pottington’s view.

    That is why mischaracterizing Pottington is so egregious.

    If Pompeo had said the same thing (“June 12 is 10 minutes from now”), and Trump said “I think we’re going to have a great summit on June 12”, then the NYT narrative would have a point.

    But just because Pottington’s view is that perfect planning can’t be accomplihsed, that doesn’t mean summit 1A is not worth having, or that it’s just a trainwreck waiting to happen.

    So you come out, shake hands, make nice in front of the press, and tell Pompeo there’s more work to be done before Summit 1B so get back to work.

    Much of my faith in this Administration is completely divorced from DJT as POTUS. In the positions I really care about, I’m very happy with selections he has made as Cabinet Officials, and I think Trump’s trolling and drawing attention to himself actually helps work get done without the glare of the spotlight.

    shipwreckedcrew (56b591)

  148. This is petty of Patterico. Trump caught the Times making a false statement that the Times attributed to an unnamed Trump official. That was the gist of Trump’s tweet. Did the Times misunderstand the official who said the meeting would be “difficult”? Did the Times choose to intentionally misunderstand a Trump official’s statement? Did the Times intend to pretend that some other Trump official said it would be impossible? It’s not Trump’s job to sort out the source of the Times’ error. Let the Times straighten it out, if they care to.

    David in Cal (0d5a1d)

  149. When you’ve had some success in holding the NYT accountable for its mistruths

    And yet they persist. You think that’s something special? BFD. Happens all the time. I’ve gotten papers to concede when wrong as well. It’s not like you stormed the beach at Normandy. I even got the WSJ to clarify a point once. Nobody cares. Get over yourself. Do you not realize how pompous you come across? Of course you’ve got most of your critics here on your blocker script, so how would you, eh?

    Skorcher (ac561d)

  150. @ David in Cal (#153), who wrote, in part:

    Did the Times misunderstand the official who said the meeting would be “difficult”?

    Actually, he didn’t say the word “difficult,” either. That’s perhaps your own paraphrase; I think it substantially understates the degree of either difficulty or likelihood that Pottinger was clearly trying to convey through his hyperbole, “10 minutes from now.” But it’s within the realm of what I think is a fair paraphrase — as would the NYT have been, in my opinion, had it said “practically impossible” or the like.

    Beldar (fa637a)

  151. Skorcher, you’re not on my block list, and I’m not using it. I’m genuinely curious about your WSJ clarification, can you share a link for us?

    You’re welcome to call me pompous; humility is never a virtue that I’ve claimed for myself.

    What you’re not welcome to do, at least without objection from me, is say that I make my arguments, or my evaluations of history or politics, based on my concern for what the media, or leftists in general, or leftists in particular, think of me.

    Beldar (fa637a)

  152. I included Michael crowley’s contribution, he is such a remarkable hack that Michael Crichton made him a character in state of fear. What is clear is reporters can’t be counted to report on anything counter narrative.

    narciso (d1f714)

  153. No. Because it was some minor thing, subject long forgotten at least a dozen years ago. It’s no big deal. As I said, nobody cares. Papers correct their mistakes all the time. That you savor this little victory, have it enshrined in your personality, kinda reads like secret fanboy to me. Bah, maybe not…but maybe. Whether I am “welcome” to view you in any way whatsoever isn’t something that concerns me. As for any objection you might have, well you don’t need me to tell you what you can do with that, or do you?

    Skorcher (ac561d)

  154. Beldar #147 – I am aware of the “history” between you and swc. I have been a long time lurker and infrequent commentator here. I go all the way back to when Balloon Juice and Little Green Footballs were conservative/libertarian.

    I also used to visit your blog back in the day – along with the Belmont Club, Dan Drezner, LGF, Tacitus, and others who have sadly moved on. I learned a lot from the comments there.

    Your response to Skorcher (post #156) was spot on – his post was somewhat overly aggressive, yet you kept your cool. You and swc are probably closer in temperament then you realize.

    bendover (1b807d)

  155. Skorcher, I think getting a correction out of the NYT is pretty cool. It’s surprising a Trump fan would insult someone for taking pride in that. But then you guys seem to just want to be unpleasant for some reason. Hate to generalize but it’s still pretty damn accurate.

    Dustin (b1b43a)

  156. The presses job is not to tell the truth, but to tell a narrative, counternarratives are increasingly hard to come by, this is what judicial watch, and other parties turn up so valuable.

    narciso (d1f714)

  157. …such a well thought out post … and then Skorcher turns it up to eleven.

    bendover (1b807d)

  158. …such a well thought out post … and then Skorcher turns it up to eleven.

    Well, that’s the number of his lot at the trailer park. Also the number of his brain cells.

    nk (dbc370)

  159. Yes. Because worrying about what you enemy thinks of you is so #winning. You really don’t understand the world, do you?

    Skorcher (ac561d) — 5/30/2018 @ 4:13 pm

    I’m curious, who is the enemy — the NY Times, the media, Democrats, or all of the above? Is anyone here your enemy and if so, who?

    DRJ (15874d)

  160. stormy’s pimp doesn’t get to play in kimba boomboom licklick’s sandbox

    happyfeet (28a91b)

  161. @116. Tapes, Mr. Feet! ‘Let me make it perfectly clear’… history rhymes.

    DCSCA (797bc0)

  162. Navy SEALs lol

    happyfeet (28a91b)

  163. stormy’s a dirty prostitute what extorted 130K from Mr. Trump and then broke her word

    and her pimp be a slimy tax cheat

    this is why I’m proud how President Trump takes the high road

    happyfeet (28a91b)

  164. Greitens is a married father of two young sons who traveled the world on humanitarian missions before joining the Navy. After being wounded in Iraq, he founded a veterans’ charity and became a best-selling author and motivational speaker.

    oh my goodness can you imagine if this jack-off was your daddy

    happyfeet (28a91b)

  165. The problem Beldar and I have is that we both insist on being right — even when we both know he’s wrong.

    ;>)

    shipwreckedcrew (56b591)

  166. Yes well and kim gardner, has no marketable skills what soever,

    narciso (d1f714)

  167. kim gardner’s deeply corrupt she’s part of the laughingstock justice system daddy soros bought last year

    happyfeet (28a91b)

  168. Come and reminisce…

    Here’s to far happier times… even the host was in a better frame of mind… https://patterico.com/2016/11/08/election-night-open-thread-2/

    Colonel Haiku (2601c0)

  169. And not a finger of defense raised on his behalf from the national party, governors, POTUS, VPOTUS, and the good ol boys like Blunt. Its an example Trump likes having around to discourage a 2020 challenger of a similar resume.

    urbanleftbehind (32a4bf)

  170. Frack. If I have to parse and diagram Trump’s words, that means I have to pay FAR more attention to him than I want to.

    But consider this: Trump is right-brained. It’s all color and texture to him and subjecting his utterances to some left-brained logical or textual analysis misses the POINT. Which is “Making America Great again”! So, stop with the pointy-headed four-eyes stuff!

    Kevin M (752a26)

  171. Why St. Louis Circuit Attorney Kim Gardner Must Be Investigated — and Stopped

    And here’s the real kicker: Almost half of all felony cases from 2018 have had to be delayed because the Circuit Attorney’s office has failed to share evidence with the court and the defense. To repeat: almost half of all St. Louis felony cases have been bungled by Kim Gardner.

    happyfeet (28a91b)

  172. Beldar,

    I am interested in how the Right To Try law works out. I am unclear on how or if drug manufacturers and medical providers (especially hospitals) will implement it. In addition, the Act is clear that patients have no right to obtain and manufacturers have no duty to provide drugs. Further, only investigational drugs with completed Phase 1 trials are covered.

    Frankly, this strikes me as a small group of drugs that will only be made available to patients who can mobilize intense public/media pressure to get the drug. However, it does provide cover to manufacturers that want to get relief from that pressure.

    DRJ (15874d)

  173. Israelis Have A Love-Hate Relationship With Jerusalem

    tops the National Soros Radio website this evening

    happyfeet (28a91b)

  174. @ DRJ: That’s interesting, and thank you for commenting. I figured that you’d been following this. I’m always concerned about quacks who prey upon the desperately ill and their families, but if the additional availability is limited to drugs that have completed Phase I trials — and, most importantly, if there is genuinely well-informed consent — I’m reassured.

    Beldar (fa637a)

  175. @ Kevin M, who wrote (#176):

    Frack. If I have to parse and diagram Trump’s words, that means I have to pay FAR more attention to him than I want to.

    Thank you for the best belly laugh I’ve had all day! 😀

    Beldar (fa637a)

  176. @ bendover (#159): Thanks for the additional context. Now I know you a little bit better.

    Beldar (fa637a)

  177. Their willingness to deliberately lie on officiak documents is troubling:
    https://hotair.com/archives/2018/05/25/report-fbi-agent-interviewed-flynn-prepared-testify-appeared-forthcoming/

    narciso (d1f714)

  178. Just parachuting in for one brief comment. Patterico, I understand what you’re saying, but here’s why I think you’re wrong.
    Let’s start with the bleeding obvious. Obviously Trump did not mean to deny that there exist senior officials in his administration. Nor did he mean to deny that some of these officials occasionally brief the press on this or that. So the only person whose existence he could possibly have been denying was the one whom the NYT claimed told the press that a June 12th meeting was impossible. And no such official exists.

    Matthew Pottinger is not that official, because he didn’t say that. Sure, he said something, but many officials have said something at one time or another, and Trump obviously was not denying that. He denied that anyone said this, and that’s true.

    If you reply to this, I would consider it a favor if you were to email me at milhouse.vh@earthlink.net

    milhouse (e6d696)

  179. @ Skorcher, who wrote (#158), regarding my link to the old blog post about John F’in Kerry (who met with unequivocal “enemies,” the ones who were still killing his former Swift Boat comrades-in-arms):

    That you savor this little victory, have it enshrined in your personality, kinda reads like secret fanboy to me.

    I’m proud of it. It was one of my best moments as a blogger, and it involved a fair amount of work on my part. The thanks I got from many of the SwiftVets meant and means a great deal to me, too; they deserve so much better than to have scum like Kerry trying to get elected on the basis of a ridiculous fiction that he was some sort of war hero instead of a calculating, self-serving snot.

    If you’ve also pushed back against media bias, I salute you for it, whether you think it was memorable or significant or not.

    By the time someone’s gotten the number of corrections/retractions that our host has, however, I think he’s due respect from others for it. I don’t think it’s a small thing; to the contrary, I think it’s one of the most constructive things someone like him, with his skill-sets but with a serious day job, can do.

    Beldar (fa637a)

  180. milhouse!

    /salute

    Beldar (fa637a)

  181. Mr. milhouse!

    happyfeet (28a91b)

  182. Hey milhouse how have you been.

    True and John ‘lurch’ Kerry, was held of for a while, but no good deed goes unpunished and we got much of the same with Obama,

    narciso (d1f714)

  183. The Act requires informed consent but having gone all over the country and seen everyone from the most rural physicians to the largest medical facilities, there is no uniformity when it comes to the meaning of informed in medicine. I doubt that will change when it comes to drugs dispensed under this law.

    However, I do expect this to open up many new opportunities for lawyers who want to help patients sue to get drugs, or who die while waiting for decisions, or who die having received drugs (since the Act does not shield anyone from State law claims under reckless/willful, gross negligence or intentional tort).

    DRJ (15874d)

  184. @ narciso, who wrote (#142):

    so seeing as the mastermind of the cheonan sinking, why we can’t arrest hem when he arrives in new York is another matter

    Yup. I’m basically resigned to the prospect that any conceivable deal that the Norks might take (which I still think is unlikely) will surely include amnesties for the North Korean war criminals, guarantees of future immunity, and probably an ongoing revenue stream ample to supply them with graft. But if we could get them to genuinely abandon their nuclear and missile programs, I won’t fault Trump for paying off the riff-raff and criminal class. If he still owned the Miss U.S.A. pageant, he’d probably schedule the next one for Pyongyang and arrange a bunch of meet-and-greets, right? And — sick though it makes me to admit it — that might actually work when other things wouldn’t.

    Beldar (fa637a)

  185. Hello, Milhouse. Hope you and yours are well.

    DRJ (15874d)

  186. Well said, Beldar 186. It is always worthwhile to make a positive difference in people’s lives.

    DRJ (15874d)

  187. BTW I don’t think the NYT’s sin was merely not qualifying “impossible”. I don’t think “impossible” is a valid summary of what Pottinger said, even with qualifiers. He said, effectively, that it would be difficult, that they were running out of time to make it happen, not that they couldn’t make it happen.

    milhouse (e6d696)

  188. @ DRJ (#190): I’ve done some such litigation, and it was always heart-breaking. This man was the plaintiff in one of the first quack cancer drug cases I took to trial, which settled before a verdict. He was one of the most admirable, strong-willed people I’ve ever met: I genuinely liked and respected him. But he’d been completely taken in by a quack, to the point that he saw his fight with his insurer (my client) as the most important mission for him to complete before his death. He was present throughout the trial, though, and while of course I had no communications with him directly except for the relatively short time he was on the witness stand (in which I treated him with appropriate respect), I think after hearing all the evidence, he began to realize how he’d been conned. And he died within days after the settlement: During the course of the lawsuit, from August 1983-late January 1984, his pancreatic tumor, untreated by anyone but the quack, had gone from the size of a tennis ball to the size of a bowling ball. The quack insisted that the proof his drug was working was that the tumor was dying in the center; all the oncologists who testified, though, including those called by the plaintiff, agreed that the necrosis in the center of the tumor was because it was growing so fast it had outgrown its blood supply.

    Beldar (fa637a)

  189. Hey, Beldar, since we’ve already gone off-topic:

    Gov. Greg Abbott Wednesday unveiled a 43-page “School and Firearm Safety Action Plan” that would expand training for arming teachers and mental health evaluations for students, among other ideas. Abbott did not foreclose the possibility of a special session of the Legislature to act on his recommendations.

    I don’t typically favor more government but thus is State, not federal, and that’s a good place to try solutions to this problem. I want a smart two-pronged approach. I hope this is it.

    DRJ (15874d)

  190. Oh! That is interesting, and thanks! A special session limited to just that is actually a good idea, as a contrast to Beto O’Rourke’s solution, which is to ban and confiscate all semi-automatic weapons.

    Beldar (fa637a)

  191. I don’t worry about the quacks as much as you, and I’ve seen and paid big bucks to half a dozen. They may hurt me and my family or they may not, but I promise you that medicine is much more sure of outcomes in hindsight than at the time you are there.

    When you are at the end of a terminal illness, hope is more important than outcomes. The key is understanding that people who will qualify for this program will have, by definition, exhausted their traditional medical options. I know what that means from personal experience.

    I hope that this Act will essentially open up availability of drugs in any Phase 2 or greater trial to anyone who can convince a doctor to give it to them, but that won’t be easy. Primary care physicians probably won’t do it, and how do you get the doctors running trials to see patients outside the trials? That narrows it down to cancer patients, but even MD Anderson would have trouble accommodating more patients.

    In addition, these drugs aren’t the kind we can pick up at the drugstore. Generally, they must be infused in infusion centers, and those are in short supply, too. Finally, it’s not clear to me who gets limited immunity from claims. Will it extend to every provider in every facility, or just manufacturers and treating doctors?

    DRJ (15874d)

  192. I suspect the difficult part of his proposal will be mental health evaluations for students, not arming willing teachers.

    DRJ (15874d)

  193. Hi everyone. I took what I thought would be a one- or two-week break from Patterico to cool off over the immigration-ban argument, where I still think Trump was right and Patterico wrong. But the reason I didn’t come back is that I’m much more fully employed than I used to be, and whatever time I have for participating in blog comment sections is mostly spent on Legal Insurrection.

    But I must say that that has turned into a poisonous swamp with the influx of alt-righters and Trump-worshipers, who don’t hesitate to use the foulest language, and to repeat the most outrageous lies, if it helps their cause. The only line I know Prof Jacobson and his crew will not allow to be crossed is jokes about prison rape; if I see one I write to him and it gets deleted PDQ. Other than that it seems like anything goes. So maybe I’ll jump ship there and come back here, since I don’t have the time for both.

    milhouse (e6d696)

  194. It beto really thinks that, they really did ‘d something to his brain’

    narciso (d1f714)

  195. I hope you come back, Milhouse.

    DRJ (15874d)

  196. Milhouse, good to see you!

    Beldar@195
    To put that in perspective, my uncle had pancreatic cancer at about the same time as that case, possibly a little later(I’d have to check dates). He was treated at the Mass General, and given the best available treatment, but the doctors made clear prognosis was fairly grim (“Well, if he survives…”), and he died rather rapidly from the effects of chemotherapy. So perhaps Mr. Vercellino was not being quite so irrational as might have appeared.

    kishnevi (14a2e1)

  197. I have met some humble but effective trial lawyers. But I think I can count them on my fingers and toes, with at least some toes left over.

    Beldar (fa637a)

  198. @ kish (#204): Oh, I thought Mr. V was very rational! He was a man of intelligence and judgment. And those things didn’t protect him from exploitation by the quack. And all of his options were very, very grim: I wouldn’t have faulted him if he’d declined conventional chemo, and none of the superb conventional doctors he’d seen before he went to the quack had recommended surgery or further radiation. The experts who’d compared his August 1983 and January 1994 CT scans on the witness stand agreed that conventional chemo would have bought him, at most, additional time measured in weeks or a very few months, at best, and that it might not have done even that.

    But then I could tell you the tale of the 16-year-old patient with a recurring lymphoma, which the docs at M.D. Anderson had brought into remission two years earlier with conventional chemo, at the cost of all her beautiful long, blonde hair. She had just made the cheerleading squad when her recurrence was diagnosed. She and her family went to the quack because he said he could do better than the conventional docs and she wouldn’t lose her hair because his special drug didn’t have any side effects. “Fine,” her mother testified that she’d told the quack, “provided that you make me one promise: If your drug isn’t working, just tell us that, so we can take her back to Anderson in time to save her life. Her hair isn’t worth her life!”

    You can guess how that ended. The quack assured them his drug was working and told them it would be a death sentence if they discontinued his treatment to send her back to Anderson, because no hospital would allow him to administer his drug on their premises. By the time they stopped believing him, she was in her last week of life. Her blonde hair looked great in her coffin, in her cheer uniform.

    I didn’t do the direct examination of her mother, and had a younger colleague do it instead, and I was very glad for that: I might could have held it together if I’d been asking the questions, but as it was, that was the first and only time I’ve ever wept openly, with both cheeks streaming, in court. And I was not alone.

    The mother’s name was Bernice Zabodyn, her husband was Stanley Zabodyn, and her daughter was Kay Wimberly Zabodyn, but they called her Katy. The best I can say is that they had a very fine malpractice lawyer, who got the last of the quack’s coverage before he became completely uninsurable. (He’s practiced uninsured ever since.)

    All of these stories are terribly, terribly sad.

    Beldar (fa637a)

  199. That is very sad, Beldar. My heart goes out to Kim, her family, and the doctors and lawyers who tried to help her and her family. But she would not have qualified for drugs under this Act since she had not “exhausted [her] approved treatment options.” There will still be medical and other people who will try to take advantage of folks, but I can’t see how this Act makes it more likely.

    DRJ (15874d)

  200. *January 1984, I meant, in #206. The decades just fly past!

    Beldar (fa637a)

  201. Aloha milhouse

    mg (9e54f8)

  202. @ narciso (#203): I haven’t checked PACER in the last week, but from press reports, it’s clear to me that Avenatti dropped his motion to intervene (and with it, his opposed application for admission pro hac vice to the SDNY) in large part to avoid a very serious risk of being sanctioned by Judge Wood. His intervention was bogus anyway.

    Whenever a lawyer applies for special permission to appear in a court before which he’s not admitted to practice, the application typically requires that one disclose all prior pro hac vice admissions and, especially, any applications for pro hac vice status that were denied. Avenatti, personally and professionally, had a lot to lose, and had already gotten a ton of free publicity from his traveling circus during his brief sojourn in Judge Wood’s court.

    I would be very surprised if this result was any surprise to Judge Wood or, indeed, anything but a well-calculated application of pressure on her part to get him out of her courtroom on a basis that can’t be appealed.

    Beldar (fa637a)

  203. Beldar predicts: Sometime in 2019, Avenatti will star in a porn movie with his client. The only question is how bad the pun will be in whatever they title it.

    Beldar (fa637a)

  204. Publicity. If anything makes me want to stick up for Cohen, it’s the way the media is treating the prostitute and her pimp. The prostitute says she wants to depose Trump and Giuliani, it’s a headline. Another prostitute says she wants to sue Cohen for defamation because he called something she said “fake news”, it’s a headline. SMH

    nk (dbc370)

  205. @ milhouse (#200): Speaking for myself (but with confidence others agree), your virtual company and your insights are certainly valued here.

    Beldar (fa637a)

  206. My mom has survived for decades after being diagnosed with terminal cancer. I personally talked to the head of oncology (an O-6) at Bethesda. Asked if there were no chance of recovery (living significantly beyond the year they gave her). He said a chance and I said 1 out of 100 (and this was before the movie). He said 1 out of 100,000. She left supervised treatment and started doing finky stuff (main thing was fasting). For whatever reason it worked. Not recommending it. Just a sea story.

    Anonymous (d41cee)

  207. As of 2018, there were 96,641 clinical trials being conducted in the US, of which over 17,826 were recruiting participants. But not all trials involve drugs; they also include surgeries, devices, and behavioral interventions. In additikn, this website explains the phases of clinical trials for cancer drugs, but I think it is applicable to all drug trials.

    DRJ (15874d)

  208. I agree with the OP, but in the third hypothetical example, I would read the sentence as asserting that the Obama Administration does not exist.

    gwjd (62b1c4)

  209. Thinking more about this, I think the most difficult cases will be pediatric cases where parents want to put their children in trials for drugs that have not been used in pediatric populations. Pediatric trials raise many ethical and medical issues and I think the medical community will be reluctant to extend care, even with limited liability.

    DRJ (15874d)

  210. Beldar, you can see me on LI any time, if you can stand the swamp. There’s a fellow-Texan of yours fighting the good fight there too, name of Ragspierre.

    milhouse (e6d696)

  211. Re: Pancreatic cancer, my grandfather was diagnosed in 1988, and the doctor at the hospital told him he had six months, tops. Our family doctor was appalled at this, and said you never tell a patient such a thing. As it happened he lived another 16 months.

    My aunt went to some quack who prescribed a whole box of remedies. Our doctor went through the box and sorted them into three piles: harmful, harmless but useless, and could perhaps do some good. Of the latter, he identified three of them as essentially identical, so there’d be no point in taking all three, and taking all three in the doses the quack recommended would be toxic.

    Then he put the whole family on a healthy food diet, on the grounds that it might help with the cancer but would certainly be good for our general health, and having the whole family on this diet would make it easier on the patient. The only thing he recommended that the rest of us wouldn’t consume was cabbage juice. It tastes horrible. My grandfather forced himself to drink it, but the rest of us refused.

    milhouse (e6d696)

  212. Hmm. Prompted by narciso (thank you, sir), I’ve caught up with the PACER filings in Cohen’s case.

    Avenatti didn’t withdraw Daniels’ application for Stormy to intervene, just his own application for admission pro hac vice. His filing today says:

    PLEASE TAKE NOTICE that the motion for admission pro hac vice filed by Michael J. Avenatti is hereby withdrawn without prejudice as unnecessary. The motion will be re-filed, if necessary, at a later time when the motion to intervene of proposed intervenor Stephanie Clifford, currently held in abeyance, is set for hearing.

    That’s almost like a threat, isn’t it? “You’re rid of me today, Kimba, but you may not be done with me, mwah-hah-hah!” But I think that’s just another hollow threat from a hollow pimp (to use nk’s apt description).

    The USAO-SDNY had “take[n] no position” on Avennati’s motion for admission pro hace vice, but had asked that Stormy’s motion to intervene continue to be held in abeyance.

    More tellingly, however, on May 25, in a letter from the USAO-SDNY filed jointly on behalf of the government, Cohen’s lawyers, Trump’s lawyers, and Avenatti, everyone had agreed that both Stormy’s motion to intervene and Avenatti’s motion to appear pro hac vice be held in abeyance. Despite everyone’s agreement to put it off, Judge Wood apparently pressed the issue of his pro hac vice application today sua sponte, which is Latin for “because the judge damn well felt like it.”

    I knew I liked her for good reasons when I briefly worked with her back in the 1980s! No BS, no nonsense. She’s also politely but summarily denied intervention motions from an assortment of other crazies who’ve tried to wander into the case, but have yet to figure out that they need a porn star to get media notice.

    Beldar (fa637a)

  213. milhouse,

    I’m glad you are doing well and, while you are missed, it’s good you’ve found someplace to chat online. Drop in more often, ok?

    DRJ (15874d)

  214. And for some reason, the docket sheet still doesn’t show a formal motion to intervene on Stormy’s behalf. She, through Avennati, is listed as an “interested party” with him as the notice attorney. But is he still skating on an oral motion to intervene he made at the first hearing?

    That would be the hallmark of a lawyer nervous of Rule 11 sanctions that could be imposed based on a pleading he’d signed. No pleading, no signature –> no sanctions.

    But sanctions orders get appealed. And smart judges resolve disputes, when they can, in ways that aren’t appealable.

    Beldar (fa637a)

  215. Bah, busted that link. Here’s the docket sheet.

    Beldar (fa637a)

  216. @ milhouse (#200): Speaking for myself (but with confidence others agree), your virtual company and your insights are certainly valued here.

    Beldar (fa637a) — 5/30/2018 @ 8:08 pm

    Even when he echoes what many others have already said?

    BTW I don’t think the NYT’s sin was merely not qualifying “impossible”. I don’t think “impossible” is a valid summary of what Pottinger said, even with qualifiers. He said, effectively, that it would be difficult, that they were running out of time to make it happen, not that they couldn’t make it happen.

    milhouse (e6d696) — 5/30/2018 @ 6:29 pm

    Membership has its privileges, I guess.

    Hello milhouse. Patterico and I have had 2 separate spirited debates and he treats me fairly. Dustin thinks I am a name changing troll. DRJ and I have a blossoming love/hate relationship. Haiku thinks I’m funny. That is all I can tell you about this new guy.

    BuDuh (0fa95f)

  217. Finally, in case you’re curious (I know I was) to see what kind of detail a former federal district judge, appointed as a special master, uses in preparing her application for court-approved fees, here’s former judge Barbara Jones’ application for approval of $47,390 in fees (with $0.00 in expenses! quite commendable, even in this digital age) for her work in April. The fees will be split between Cohen and the government, and it’s unlikely that either Cohen (who asked for a master to be appointed) or the USAO-SDNY (who doesn’t want to annoy the special master) will quibble.

    But most courts I know wouldn’t be satisfied with this minimal level of detail regarding the nature of the services rendered. RHIP, as they say.

    Beldar (fa637a)

  218. Here is something new, not about Avenatti or Stormy but about Cohen:

    New York state authorities sweetened a plea offer made to a taxi operator who partnered with President Donald Trump’s personal lawyer Michael Cohen after federal authorities raided Cohen’s home, office and hotel room, according to court transcripts.

    Evgeny “Gene” Freidman, known as New York’s “Taxi King,” pleaded guilty last week to criminal tax fraud for failing to pay $5 million in taxes in a deal that would allow him to avoid prison time.

    The no-prison deal was a significant enhancement from an offer Freidman rejected on April 4 — just a few days before the FBI raid on Cohen — that would have included a minimum of two years and as much as six years in prison and a $1 million fine, according to transcripts of the March court proceeding. The offer included a sliding scale; if Freidman paid less than $1 million he would face more jail time. Friedman had faced as much as 25 years in prison when he was charged last year.

    The investigation by US prosecutors in Manhattan was initiated in part by a referral from special counsel Robert Mueller. FBI agents working with Mueller have interviewed several business partners of Cohen as part of Mueller’s broader inquiry into election meddling. Freidman’s cooperation in the deal suggests he has useful information for prosecutors and could place added pressure on Cohen, who has been Trump’s attorney for a decade, to cooperate with authorities.

    The initial offer and subsequent enhancement has not been previously reported. New York investigators made the initial offer in late March. When Freidman rejected the deal at the hearing two weeks later, John Healy, a lawyer with the state attorney general’s office, told Justice Peter Lynch, “The offer is withdrawn. We don’t intend to make any offers and we are ready for trial come June 18.”

    But days later, on April 9, FBI agents working with the US attorney’s office in Manhattan raided Cohen’s home, office, hotel room and safe deposit box, seizing several boxes of documents and over a dozen electronic devices.

    Prosecutors have not said anything publicly about the raid being the impetus for a better deal.

    More at the link.

    DRJ (15874d)

  219. milhouse & I have agreed often and disagreed more than a few times, but always (at least as I recall, from my perspective) with courtesy and mutual respect, BuDuh. He is smart, articulate, a dogged advocate for his beliefs, and intellectually honest. It’s not “membership,” but it is indeed something earned.

    Beldar (fa637a)

  220. More about yong choi here:

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk

    narciso (d1f714)

  221. If you can eat these everyday you will improve your health.
    Eggs
    Avocado
    Papaya
    Tomato
    And drink 1/2 your body weight in ounces of water
    + a package of emergency has all the good electrolytes one needs in a day.
    Everything in moderation.

    mg (9e54f8)

  222. duck eggs are really good for you as well

    mg (9e54f8)

  223. Judge Jones did a lot of “preparing”. Does that include waking up in the morning, pouring a cup of coffee, showering, doing her hair and putting on her makeup?

    nk (dbc370)

  224. So in three excellent ballgames, the Yankees took two of three at home against the Astros. After their win today, the Yanks were their usual “we’re not surprised, we’re cool” selves. But when they won yesterday, after having been dominated by Verlander in the previous game, they all rushed the field, jumped up and down, dumped buckets of Gatorade, and generally acted as if they had just won the World Series. Which, last year, they didn’t, because the Astros did. I suppose that’s about as good a back-handed compliment as the Yankees ever give.

    Beldar (fa637a)

  225. I’m guessing she’ll never be asked those questions, nk. 😀

    Beldar (fa637a)

  226. Right To Try came from Pence and a precious Indiana boy and his mother.

    DRJ (15874d)

  227. People that strenuously argue that he didn’t mean what he clearly said shouldn’t be listened to. That’s useful data.

    Time123

    That is my main takeaway. They are either pigheaded, bad at logical argument, or (in many cases) both. Either way, they are not worth my time.

    Patterico (115b1f)

  228. If you really want to know what (former) Judge Jones has been doing as special master, her interim report yesterday contains, inferentially, a whole lot more support for her fees than her fee application did. Key bits that jumped out at me:

    The parties have also agreed that the designation submissions from the Plaintiff/Intervenors and any subsequent conferences regarding those submissions, which may be necessary to assist the Special Master in making privilege determinations, will be ex parte. It is also agreed by the parties that should the Special Master require additional facts or background information to assist her in making privilege determinations, she may also confer with the Government — and receive submissions from the Government — on an ex parte basis….

    [A]s the Special Master makes her Final Privilege Determinations, she will submit determinations to the Court in a Report and Recommendation, which will include the following categories: (1) Privileged Materials; (2) Partially Privileged Materials; (3) Nonprivileged Materials; or (4) Highly Personal materials.

    That first bit is a vote of either confidence in the special master, or resignation that there’s no better alternative, because both sides are agreeing that she can meet and communicate secretly with both sides without the other’s participation or knowledge. This will let her apply judicious (but not exactly judicial) pressure on both sides to drop their BS arguments and only fight about what’s worth fighting about. Related thereto, almost assuredly:

    As of today, the Special Master has concluded her review of the May 4th production, which comprised 639 hard copy documents totaling 12,543 pages. She has also concluded her review of the contents of the May 8th and 9th productions based upon the 252 total privilege designations provided by the Plaintiff and Intervenors. The 292,006 items from the first two productions that have not been designated privileged or highly personal by the parties were released to the Government on May 23rd.

    This isn’t a full picture by any means, and it might well be substantially skewed; there’s no reason to presume that the very large volume of documents still undergoing review by Cohen’s lawyers for privilege designation have the same proportions of privileged and nonprivileged documents. Maybe the batch they reviewed in coming up with these 252 designations included all of the text messages and few of the emails, for instance; one would logically expect the former to have a lower proportion of privileged communications, but texts might also have been easier to gather and turn over and review, and would tend to be shorter and less substantive, resulting in them being reviewed first and with comparative ease.

    Nevertheless, from the descriptions here of the data reviewed so far and their volume, it’s fairly astonishing to me that Cohen’s lawyers are only claiming privilege on 252 items. Presumably (assuming Cohen’s lawyers are doing a good job fighting at the margins of what they think they can get away with), some of those 252 designations will be challenged by the government, at which point they’ll either be fought over (first before Judge Jones, and then, based on her recommendations, before Judge Wood) or withdrawn; and the government will probably win some fights, so the total ultimately withheld from the prosecution team will be somewhat lower.

    And I’m frankly a bit bemused by the inclusion of a separate category for “Highly Personal materials.” I don’t know what Judges Jones or Wood propose doing with those. It may be that they’re contemplating a protective order which would permit the prosecution team to see those materials, but prevent them from publicizing them without notice to Cohen followed by leave of court. Or maybe they have in mind keeping those from the prosecution altogether.

    But you know what I thought of when I saw that “Highly Personal materials”? It’s pure conjecture, of course, but I thought to myself: “I wonder what really sleazy porn a guy like Cohen had on his computers.”

    Beldar (fa637a)

  229. Just parachuting in for one brief comment. Patterico, I understand what you’re saying, but here’s why I think you’re wrong.
    Let’s start with the bleeding obvious. Obviously Trump did not mean to deny that there exist senior officials in his administration. Nor did he mean to deny that some of these officials occasionally brief the press on this or that. So the only person whose existence he could possibly have been denying was the one whom the NYT claimed told the press that a June 12th meeting was impossible. And no such official exists.

    Matthew Pottinger is not that official, because he didn’t say that. Sure, he said something, but many officials have said something at one time or another, and Trump obviously was not denying that. He denied that anyone said this, and that’s true.

    If you reply to this, I would consider it a favor if you were to email me at milhouse.vh@earthlink.net

    It is nice to see you, Milhouse. However, I don’t think you’re paying close enough attention to what Trump actually said.

    I fully understand the argument. But you’re not understanding that it doesn’t interface with Trump’s actual words. I notice you didn’t bother to respond to the examples I gave in the post.

    From the structure of his sentence, Trump is denying the existence of the official quoted by the NYT. Then he is further denying the content of their “quote” of him.

    In other words, referencing the post that I wrote and that I can’t even tell if you actually read in its entirety, he said #1, not #2. As the examples you ignore make clear.

    I’d be very pleased to see you comment again on this topic, but if you do, please understand that I have had a bellyful of people just repeating the argument that the man who said what the NYT claimed doesn’t exist. There is no point in returning to parrot that again. If you return, please do engage with the argument I made. Addressing the examples would help.

    Patterico (115b1f)

  230. No hes denying the statement, which is at odds with events as they are currently constituted.

    narciso (d1f714)

  231. That’s interesting, Beldar 237. Thanks for the summary.

    DRJ (15874d)

  232. Cohen never struck me as a sex sleaze. And not even an especially sleazy business sleaze. More like a not too bright hustler and factotum who cuts ethical corners because he lacks the competence to do it the right way.

    And I would hope that if the FBI were to seize my phone, a judge would consider the texts between me and my daughter, or her mother, or my brothers, “highly personal”.

    nk (dbc370)

  233. Here’s why I was a bit surprised to see that Avenatti had only withdrawn his application to appear pro hac vice (and not his motion, perhaps made only orally, for his client, Stormy, to intervene as a party in Cohen’s lawsuit, the way Trump and the Trump Organization have already done): I’d previously believed media reports like this one from CNN: Avenatti drops request to participate in Cohen case after warning to ‘stop your publicity tour’:

    Porn star Stormy Daniels’ attorney, Michael Avenatti, withdrew his motion to participate in the court battle involving the FBI raid of President Donald Trump’s attorney’s hotel and office Wednesday after a federal judge warned him he would have to “stop your publicity tour.”

    Avenatti, who practices law in California, had requested to be admitted into the New York proceedings, but was met with fierce objection from the attorney for Michael Cohen, Trump’s long-time lawyer, who cited Avenatti’s frequent television appearances, public statements about Cohen’s guilt and his release of Cohen’s personal financial information.

    The headline and the first paragraph seem to conflate his motion to appear pro hac vice (in which the issue is Avennati’s personal and professional fitness to be temporarily allowed to practice before the SDNY, even though he’s not licensed in New York) and his motion (apparently still oral or under seal) for his client, Stormy, to be permitted to intervene as a party. In theory, it’s possible that he’s unfit but that she has the required degree of involvement and interest in the results; or it’s possible that he’s fit but that she lacks a valid reason to be a named party; or (as is certainly the case in my opinion) that both he’s unfit and she’s without sufficient reason.

    But now, because you read comments at Patterico’s Pontifications, you know more about this than CNN!

    Beldar (fa637a)

  234. @ nk: It may be that the government doesn’t fight over the “Highly Personal” stuff. But if it’s not relevant and responsive, it seems that should be the basis for withholding it. I really can’t tell from this whether or to what extent she or the parties are arguing responsiveness in addition to privilege.

    It might depend on whether the porn stars are Ukrainian.

    Beldar (fa637a)

  235. I’d love to read McDermott Will & Emory’s engagement letter with Cohen. And I wonder if Trump is, or will end up, paying their fees?

    If I were one of Trump’s lawyers, I’d tell him that yes, absolutely, he should pay their fees, including those for whatever additional staff they may have to hire (beyond the 15 lawyers and two data specialists they’ve been using so far), to complete their remaining review within the June 15 deadline Judge Wood gave them today. She’s holding their feet to the fire, apparently, warning them that if and to the extent they fail, they’ll have lost their chance to have the special master involved, and that Judge Wood will turn what’s left over to the USAO-SDNY’s “taint team.” That would not be in Donald Trump’s interests at all.

    I’ve seen quite a few civil cases in which the target defendant agreed to indemnify the non-targets, including paying for (and sometimes even directing in substantial part) their separate lawyers, to combat a plaintiff’s “divide and conquer” strategy. This would be analogous to that, from Trump’s perspective.

    As for McDermott Will’s protests that the lawyers they’ve got are working as hard as they can: Judge Wood was an antitrust lawyer for a Manhattan BigLaw firm during the 1970s and 1980s, and I’m sure she’s worked on cases in which the litigants routinely had teams many times that size laboring simultaneously in document-intensive cases. I doubt that Judge Wood was very much impressed — at least, not in the direction intended and hoped for — with the argument that one member of [Cohen’s legal] team had a ‘tremor in his hand from lack of sleep.'” In high-stakes private civil practice, the typical response to that would be: “Underemployed lawyers are a dime a dozen today. Replace him, with best wishes for his recovery.”

    Beldar (fa637a)

  236. On the other hand (arguing with my own #244):

    If Trump pays for Cohen’s lawyers even though Trump has no legal obligation to do so, that becomes another datum in a potential obstruction of justice inquiry.

    My guess, then, is that there has been private and very discrete discussion, not committed to paper or electrons, between Trump’s lawyers and Cohen’s lawyers, with a wink and a nod assurance that in due course someday, Cohen’s lawyers will get paid. Although attorney-client privilege couldn’t any longer shield that communication, it’s arguably covered by a joint defense/common interest privilege. And that’s a conditional privilege that can be overcome by, among other arguments, the “crime/fraud” exception, just like attorney-client privilege can sometimes be overcome.

    Representing Trump would be a challenge, even if he weren’t an idiot with the reputation in the legal community that he “wont listen and won’t pay.”

    Beldar (fa637a)

  237. duck eggs are really good for you as well

    mg (9e54f8) — 5/30/2018 @ 9:06 pm

    I like them better for baking. Duck and goose egg whites consistency are thick. I got six ducklings at Tractor Supply and it looks like all of them are girls.

    Pinandpuller (2fe3a0)

  238. Beldar predicts: Sometime in 2019, Avenatti will star in a porn movie with his client. The only question is how bad the pun will be in whatever they title it.

    Beldar (fa637a) — 5/30/2018 @ 8:02 pm

    Doesn’t that fall under Revenge Porn?

    Pinandpuller (2fe3a0)

  239. Could be, Pin! Spanking would certainly be involved, too!

    Beldar (fa637a)

  240. Note: As #244 & #245 display, I’m entirely capable of arguing with myself while never going ad hominem.

    Beldar (fa637a)

  241. This also happened today:

    NEW: Rudy Giuliani tells me he is doing question and answer prep sessions regarding special counsel probe with the president in the evenings this week.— Kelly O'Donnell (@KellyO) May 30, 2018

    Politico’s report today only said that prep sessions were being planned, not that they were already being done. But I heard Fox News’ WH correspondent repeat the “already doing” report on their nightly broadcast, and there’s this, to the same effect (and crediting NBC’s O’DOnnell) from MSNBC (just trust me and don’t give MSNBC the click, please; now I’ve got to run my anti-virus software, but my browser will still feel dirty).

    As Rudy has repeatedly reminded us, the POTUS is a very busy man, focused on saving the world and MAGA. Why would a very busy POTUS who reputedly hated being briefed to prepare for campaign debates agree to a series of Q&A prep sessions now, if he were still seriously considering refusing to sit for an interview with Mueller?

    I’m tell ya, it’s gonna happen. That’s been obvious since the first day Rudy came on board and said something to the effect of, “Oh, we’ll never agree to 12 hours. The most I would ever agree to is two or three.”

    Any bets on whether this time next year, Rudy and poor ol’ Jeff Sessions will be standing next to each other in the Former Trump Top Officials’ Unemployment queue? Listening to Trump b!tch about Sessions being ethical is sort of like watching someone repeatedly kick an ol’ hound dog in the ribs, just because he sh@t the carpet two years ago.

    Beldar (fa637a)

  242. Okay, last comment tonight, just a link: Tomorrow’s NY Post front page is awesome.

    Beldar (fa637a)

  243. Pindandpuller has his ducks in a row

    mg (9e54f8)

  244. dirty judge kimba boomboom licklick’s job is to railroad Michael Cohen *not* to mollycoddle Stormy’s pimp

    happyfeet (28a91b)

  245. Superficial charm and glibness
    Inflated sense of self-worth
    Constant need for stimulation
    Lying pathologically
    Conning others; being manipulative
    Lack of remorse or guilt
    Shallow emotions
    Callousness; lack of empathy
    Using others (a parasitic lifestyle)
    Poor control over behavior
    Promiscuous sexual behavior
    Behavioral problems early in life
    Lack of realistic, long-term goals
    Being impulsive
    Being irresponsible
    Blaming others and refusing to accept responsibility
    Having several marital relationships
    Delinquency when young
    Revocation of conditional release
    Criminal acts in several realms (criminal versatility)

    So… are we going to verify the last two with the Mueller investigation?

    noel (b4d580)

  246. PSYCHOPATHY: DEFINITION, SYMPTOMS, SIGNS from healthyplace.com.

    noel (b4d580)

  247. “The no longer quiet alliance between Never Trump conservatives and liberals does not offer an alternative to a choice between the Democratic “resistance” and Republicans.

    It’s not as if it was a great secret but last week’s New York Times feature about the open ties between prominent conservative critics of President Donald Trump and liberals made it official. The last stalwarts of the “Never Trump” conservative movement are preparing to do more than merely complain about the object of their disdain; they’re now ready to join forces with liberals to oppose the president both in court and perhaps in future political campaigns.

    Contrary to their hopes, this is not a harbinger of a political realignment. While the majority of Republican primary voters in 2016 voted for candidates other than Trump and a significant number of them continued to voice displeasure with their party’s nominee throughout that campaign, the overwhelming majority of GOP voters eventually voted for Trump that November. Even many of those who couldn’t bring themselves to pull the lever for Trump eventually made their peace with him once he was in office. Though his conduct has continued to strike even many of his supporters as unpresidential and deeply inappropriate, his conservative appointments and policies have vindicated the decision of many of his former critics on the right who hoped or believed that he would govern like a Republican even if he couldn’t act like one.

    But to the hardcore Never Trump remnant, his policies are irrelevant. That fact that he has been arguably among the most conservative presidents in memory and has done things these figures would have supported if any other Republican had carried them out means nothing to them. In their eyes, Trump’s personality and sensibilities are a threat, as one of them told The New York Times, to “the liberal order” and a destroyer of the “norms of democracy.”

    Seen in that apocalyptic context, the issues that governed their political stances no longer matter. The only thing that matters is Trump. If that means making common cause with liberals and Democrats and abandoning their past concerns about the enormous and terrible costs of the revival of modern liberalism that the Obama administration championed and Hillary Clinton would have continued and made worse, then as far as they are concerned, so be it.

    Nor, can we argue with the logic of their decision since, if we take their hysteria about Trump seriously, it jives exactly with the similar rhetoric that has been voiced about Trump on the left since he won the election. To those who seriously believe, despite the evidence of the last 16 months (his tweets and angry comments about the special counsel investigating alleged collusion with Russia notwithstanding) that Trump is plotting the end of democracy and that, absent a successful resistance, we are living in the moral equivalent of the last days of the Weimar republic, this stance makes sense.“

    http://thefederalist.com/2018/05/30/never-trumpers-finally-admit-theyre-effectively-spiteful-democrats/

    Colonel Haiku (2601c0)

  248. And they need to own that stain.

    Colonel Haiku (2601c0)

  249. Colonel Haiku says, “But to the hardcore Never Trump remnant, his policies are irrelevant”.

    Where do you come up with that? The problem is that, to you, it seems to be a ALL that matters.

    He is attacking the FBI, Dept. of Justice and individual investigators including Republicans Rosenstein, Sessions, Comey, Mueller…. all without proof. And, at the same time, defending every racist that comes along. Shouldn’t you have a problem with that?

    noel (b4d580)

  250. Excusing unethical or illegal behavior because someone is “on your side” is exactly how you get Watergate.

    noel (b4d580)

  251. Trump has no policies. He has had a series of one-offs. They are for the main part conservative but that is due to the folks executing them and behind those folks the folks who advised Trump to appoint them.

    nk (dbc370)

  252. An update.

    With a big boost from men, Republican incumbent Sen. Ted Cruz leads U.S. Rep. Beto O’Rourke, his Democratic challenger, 50 – 39 percent in the Texas Senate race, according to a Quinnipiac University Poll released today.

    This compares to the results of an April 18 survey by the independent Quinnipiac (KWIN-uh-pe-ack) University, showing the race too close to call with Sen. Cruz at 47 percent and O’Rourke at 44 percent.

    https://poll.qu.edu/texas/release-detail?ReleaseID=2542

    Methodology highlights:

    PARTY IDENTIFICATION
    Republican 34%
    Democrat 23
    Independent 34
    Other/DK/NA 9

    https://poll.qu.edu/images/polling/tx/tx05302018_demos_twbn13.pdf

    And in April:

    PARTY IDENTIFICATION
    Republican 31%
    Democrat 24
    Independent 36
    Other/DK/NA 10

    https://poll.qu.edu/images/polling/tx/tx04182018_demos_tjnp18.pdf

    It is amazing what happens when there are less Independents and Others. It also helps when you stick to 100% of the population instead of the 101% they surveyed in April.

    BuDuh (fc15db)

  253. And that Federalist agitprop that Haiku copypasted is just that. Agitation propaganda. Rabble-rousing bullsh!t to agitate Trump’s supporters and maintain the us-against-them mindset. Now that — “Us Against Them” — you can call Trump’s policy, no question about it.

    nk (dbc370)

  254. You kind of prove the point, seeing as the bureau seems to dropping the ball f0more than bill buckner, because they were so busy chasing squirrels. And were going to believe the flagship of the journalist tell me another one.

    narciso (d1f714)

  255. nonono

    fat-ass Bill Kristol and his hot to trot slob wife are for reals in bed with daddy soros

    happyfeet (28a91b)

  256. That’s what I’m talking about, back around 2006, Boston was the only one who wanted to revise the framework

    https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-05-29/bolton-adds-loyalists-to-national-security-council-staff

    narciso (d1f714)

  257. History doesn’t repeat, but it does rhyme

    https://mobile.twitter.com/HeshmatAlavi/status/1002126060220239873/video/1

    narciso (d1f714)

  258. “fat-ass Bill Kristol and his hot to trot slob wife are for reals in bed with daddy soros”
    happyfeet (28a91b)

    So….. what exactly are you doing? I come from a marketing background and I have to wonder who your audience is? Are there that many eleven year old boys reading this?

    noel (b4d580)

  259. Kristol is part of an alliance with Hayden, and Morrell and a whole clique of old guard players the ones who missed Islamic states rise, who allowed libya and Egypt to fall to islamist,

    narciso (d1f714)

  260. I pay him to make coprolalic (it’s a word) misogynistic comments that way I don’t look so bad by comparison.

    nk (dbc370)

  261. When you know what place they are on the board, it becomes clear, well not John schindler he genuinely list his grip

    narciso (d1f714)

  262. So did anyone end up engaging with my examples in this thread? Did anyone say they behold let Obama or Comey off the hook in my examples, or show a difference between the examples and the Trump quote?

    I am on a phone and cannot easily check, but so far I remember maybe two: harkin, who didn’t even understand the examples (taking a parallel to the NYT and misinterpreting it as a parallel to the official) and maybe one other commenter who took a brief and ineffective stab at the snowman example.

    So I guess I give up. Maybe Milhouse will try. I’d relish a conversation with him about it because he is very smart and disagrees with me. So far he has only repeated the “Trump said #2” argument that people who refuse to engage the logical structure of Trump’s sentence espouse.

    One positive thing happened: Anonymous said I had a good point. Having someone listen to you and realize maybe you have a point even though they disagreed with you is a rare experience and speaks well of the open-mindedness of such a person.

    My main takeaway here is so solidify my list of people who should not be listened to.

    Patterico (2184ae)

  263. Trump has no policies. He has had a series of one-offs. They are for the main part conservative but that is due to the folks executing them and behind those folks the folks who advised Trump to appoint them.

    nk (dbc370) — 5/31/2018 @ 5:37 am

    And yet it’s being accomplished and that still isn’t good enough. It seems your support for conservative values/principles stops at the point of where things actually get done.

    Colonel Haiku (2601c0)

  264. Just wind in sails…

    Colonel Haiku (2601c0)

  265. So whats really the point? Pat you hugely attack trump on the minutia, why? Hes accomplishing massive things, boosting conservatism throughout the country, so why? Why do this day after day?

    EPWJ (351923)

  266. My main takeaway here is so solidify my list of people who should not be listened to.

    interesting

    USA Today propaganda slut William Cummings offers this today:

    Here is a list of people who have come to Roseanne Barr’s defense

    lists are the new hotness

    America!

    happyfeet (28a91b)

  267. So did anyone end up engaging with my examples in this thread?

    Now that you mention it I guess I never did. I got mesmerized by the comments. They had an open thread sort of charm.

    I will give it a shot.

    BuDuh (fc15db)

  268. I think the whole exercise is a waste of time, beldar, it wouldn’t have happened if Cohen wasn’t trumps atty.

    So the regime cared enough to send it’s lead war criminal to new York

    narciso (d1f714)

  269. 1. I always agree with Trump when he agrees with me;
    2. I have never failed to praise him for the conservative things he’s done — from Gorsuch, to immigration, to Iran, to Jerusalem, to North Korea and many others; and
    3. I have always defended him against unfair attacks — from the Muslim ban, to the hooker, to the blocking of his Twitter, and many others.

    But when he’s ready to give away the store with DACA (yes, and McCarthy stopped him), and NRA-shames the pro-RKBA Republicans (yes, he did), and signs any spending bill they put in front of him (including funding for Planned Parenthood), then I say “The man has no core”.

    nk (dbc370)

  270. “The Trump tax cuts, which prompted hundreds of companies to dole out $2,000 bonuses and wage hikes, have also prompted several states to proposed reduced taxes, according to a sweeping review of the nation. About a quarter of all governors have proposed tax cuts, said a new analysis of the 47 “State of the State” addresses in 47 states.”

    https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/washington-secrets/trump-tax-cuts-spark-more-reductions-in-states

    Colonel Haiku (2601c0)

  271. Look what he has done, not what he says right, well make up your mind.
    Yes were putting the Moloch minions temples out of business, well except in tyre I mean seattle.

    narciso (d1f714)

  272. The Devil is in the minutia… or so he says…

    Colonel Haiku (2601c0)

  273. It’s clown nose off, clown nose on,
    Speaking of Samantha bee…

    narciso (d1f714)

  274. It seems your support for conservative values/principles stops at the point of where things actually get done.

    Once you understand the mind-set, you will understand. These people, mostly lawyers, are process oriented. It’s fundamental to how their brains are wired. It’s also why they are so easily offended and upset. It’s the easiest path to victory. Similar to my own process of throwing out the whole argument because the most basic element involved here was that there was no person at all who used the “impossible” word (don’t want to get back into that just using a parallel here). Those of us who work in logic (real-world logic that is) understand and accept this early-exit approach. Other types cannot. There is value (hours to be charged) in belaboring points. Especially since as long as you can keep the argument going, and keep interrogating the other side by making them respond to your pressure, the other side has a probability higher than zero of a slight misstatement on which a “gotcha” game can then be played. Those who are results oriented are driven by a need to get something done and finished and to move on to the next item. While process is important, it is not the driving factor.

    Skorcher (ac561d)

  275. And how about the painful discharge petition, they are pushing that through.

    narciso (d1f714)

  276. Well, this https://www.cnn.com/2018/05/30/politics/donald-trump-jeff-sessions-attorney-general/index.html makes me want to say: “Go drown yourself in your own spit, you orange-skinned Fifth Avenue closet queen!”

    Like I said: He has no core. No principles. No loyalties. Only his momentary interests. Not even the ability to own up to his mistakes and either live with them or undo them, instead of whining like a colicky baby.

    nk (dbc370)

  277. This reduces to

    #1: X quotes “a senior White House official,” who doesn’t exist, as saying Y. Wrong! Use real people as your sources.

    And many are rewriting Trump’s statement to mean:

    #2: X quotes a senior White House official as saying Y, but no “senior White House official who said Y” exists.

    But those statements are not equivalent. So the rewriting changes the meaning.

    Here is the problem. Nobody, that I saw, rewrote it as you suggested at #2

    If I were to rewrite, using your example #1, it it would look like this:

    #2: X quotes a senior White House official, that doesn’t exist, as saying Y, and no “senior White House official who said Y” exists

    Again, Trump is singles out a particular type of senior Whitehouse Official. One that doesn’t exist. It is your refuseal to accept that he did that that creates the incorrect rewording.

    If Trump, for example, singles out the senior Whitehouse Official that is mute, is he really talking about all senior Whitehouse Officials?

    You keep removing the attribute that individualized who he was talking about.

    BuDuh (fc15db)

  278. And you know who else he will throw under the bus for two cents, Haiku and narciso? You!

    nk (dbc370)

  279. Sessions can’t move because of the weasels in the dept you have deemed honorable, meanwhile reputations are being ruined, people are being nNkrupted

    narciso (d1f714)

  280. “… and signs any spending bill they put in front of him (including funding for Planned Parenthood), then I say “The man has no core.”

    I think he followed up on that PP funding thing… Right To Life folks were happy.

    Colonel Haiku (2601c0)

  281. I am sorry, Patterico. We often forget to tell others when we agree with their points and focus on those we have a problem with. I very frequently agree with your take on things but, like many readers, I fail to mention it.

    This is the only blog I regularly check precisely because you have the ability to see through the BS like no other. I think you should know it too.

    I will try to do better.

    noel (b4d580)

  282. 287… well then my heirs could hire a lawyer to ease teh pain…

    Colonel Haiku (2601c0)

  283. I know you’ve alreAdy decided he’s a Warwick because he floats.

    narciso (d1f714)

  284. Let’s rewrite the tweet using “mute.

    The Failing ‪@nytimes‬ quotes “a senior White House official,” who is mute, as saying “even if the meeting were reinstated, holding it on June 12 would be impossible, given the lack of time and the amount of planning needed.” WRONG AGAIN! Use real people, not phony sources.

    Are all senior Whitehouse Officials now mute?

    BuDuh (fc15db)

  285. god bless you President Trump Mr. Dinesh didn’t deserve what food stamp did on him

    you’re not just a nice person I like how you do for reals justice all up in it too

    that’s not really America’s calling card anymore

    happyfeet (28a91b)

  286. Just got done surfing for pron on the internet – ran across a video titled:

    “19 Year Old Homemade Video”

    Show of hands please – who thinks if I click on this link I’ll be watching a video of a 19 year old performing lewd acts … and who thinks this video was filmed in 1999?

    Feel free to diagram the sentence if you must.

    bendover (8c9eab)

  287. Now dnesh got a sharper edge from the experience, a crash course in gangster govt, May be humpty rove might have learned something.

    narciso (d1f714)

  288. 271 – maybe it’s an indication that few care about the sentence structure of a tweet when his meaning and intent were not difficult to discern in the context of the facts of the events described.

    We concede the debating point.

    Now how about the substance of the matter of the NYT mischaracterizing the briefer in order to set up a conflict with Trump where none existed?

    Shipwreckedcrew (56b591)

  289. 278 — nk: He never said he had the core you are looking for. He’s always been an a la carte politician because he’s not a politician. He stakes out ground for political advantage and accomplished what he can. So far that much more good than bad.

    Shipwreckedcrew (56b591)

  290. Rove is a traitorous pos.

    mg (9e54f8)

  291. Now how about the substance of the matter of the NYT mischaracterizing the briefer in order to set up a conflict with Trump where none existed?

    Shipwreckedcrew

    This is an interesting perspective and helps me understand why you guys are bent out of shape about this. To me, the NYT was just trying to explain the situation and got too simple. Instead of saying “hey, it’s very unlikely, and we’d bet the house it ain’t gonna happen” they instead assumed it was basically ok to just assume it’s not going to happen. But assuming an inch extra information, they slightly get a scoop and seem like better reporters, but really they are being sloppy.

    I think that sort of laziness, combined with good faith bias, generally explains a lot of the problem in media today.

    To you, this isn’t so innocent and the NYT was actively looking for a fight with trump, but I still don’t understand why it’s so terrrrrrible that the meeting is pushed back. Last meeting was 1994. If it takes a few months, who cares? There’s several months before the elections and from my perspective, the North Koreans are never going to follow on their end of any deal so I actually was very pleased that Trump delayed this thing. He may not be the grand master of deals, but he’s hustled enough people to know when to walk away from a used car dealer.

    It seems to me that the NYT story just didn’t harm Trump, but Trump’s getting upset enough to bash the NYT for using anonymous sources did harm Trump because no matter how you slice it, his administration insisted on the anonymous sourcing and then lied about it because of a years long campaign to insist anonymous sources = fake news and lied.

    Anyway, that’s probably the difference between our views. I see no injury from the NYT report so I seek no explanation for one. You see injury and have interpreted the world to line up with an answer (being that the NYT’s well known hatred of Republicans set this up).

    Dustin (83e4a1)

  292. Gordy is a lawyer looting Americans.
    Burn him, Pele.

    mg (9e54f8)

  293. Gowdy.

    mg (9e54f8)

  294. 79. bendover (8c9eab) — 5/30/2018 @ 11:55 am

    79.Sammy, you are a voracious reader of the NYT, I commend you on that. As such, I am sure that over your lifetime, you have a “sixth sense” of what the Times (or any paper for that matter) is trying to get their readers to infer from a published article.

    NYT – “As with so many issues involving this president, the views of his aides often have little effect on what he actually says. On Thursday, for example, a senior White House official told reporters that even if the meeting were reinstated, holding it on June 12 would be impossible, given the lack of time and the amount of planning needed.”

    “On Friday, Mr. Trump said, ‘It could even be the 12th.’”

    Knowing what you know – what are your thoughts as to what the Times article was trying to imply to their readers ?

    That trump’s optimistic statements that they meeting could take place on June 12 were nonsense. They thought Trump was either lying or out of touch with reality.

    But the New York Times wasn’t exactly trying to point that opinion out. The New York Times was just trying to avoid lending credence to Trump’s statement that it could be June 12, (which they had to lead with) because they (the New York Times reporters) didn’t believe that.

    The New York Times now has a goal of trying not to let what they think are Trump misstatements pass. Only this one wasn’t quite such a miststement, and it may even come to pass. And they didn’t actually have a good source to indicate the degree of skepticism that they had.

    Now what the New York Times wrote also had the indirect effect of making it look like Trump’s appointees were contradicting him (which they were careful not to do) and also of undermining possible negotiations with North Korea. (The State Department often goes after longshots. Many requests for prisoner releases are like that.)

    It may very possibly have been his appointees who brought it to Trump’s attention, because they didn’t want that word “impossible”, as reflecting the opinion of someone important in the white House, to remain in the public record.

    Sammy Finkelman (02a146)

  295. Trump never said it was “probable” only that it was “possible” that it could be June 12. The Senior Administraiton Official probably would have rated the probability at about 5% or 10% – something less than Trump but he was careful not to exclude that possibility. He only said a lot of things would have to happen and it depended on North Korea. The North Koreans had cut off all contact for about a week.)

    82. I wrote:

    The word “impossible” does not appear. The word “possible” does:

    And then I quote something interesting but irrelevant to this discussion..

    I looked at the transcript more closely, after printing it out, and I see that the word possible does appear in this context:

    https://www.cnn.com/2018/05/27/politics/transcript-white-house-background-briefing/index.html?iid=EL

    here’s how it goes:

    QUESTION: Can you clarify that the president announced the letter and (inaudible) summit is called off. But then later he said it’s possible the existing summit could take place or a summit at a later date.

    Is he saying that it’s possible that June 12th could still — could still happen?

    SENIOR WHITE HOUSE OFFICIAL: That — that — that’s —

    QUESTION: (Inaudible).

    SENIOR WHITE HOUSE OFFICIAL: — I think that the main point, I suppose, is that — that the ball is in North Korea’s court right now, and there — there’s really not a lot of time. We’ve — we’ve lost quite a bit of time that we would need in order to — I mean there’s been an enormous amount of preparation that’s gone on over the past few months at the White House, at State and — and with other agencies and so forth.

    But there’s a certain amount of actual dialogue that needs — needs to take place at the working level with your counterparts to ensure that the agenda is clear in the — in the minds of those two leaders when they sit down to actually — and talk, and — and negotiate, and — and hopefully, make a deal. And June 12th is in — in 10 minutes, and it’s going to be, you know…

    [Maybe the New York Times “knew” it was impossible, but the Senior White House Official (Pottinger) didn’t say so. He didn’t finish the sentence. – SF]

    But the president has said that he — he has — some day, that he looks forward to — to meeting with Kim.

    Pottinger sasy that even if it doesn’t happen on June 12, he’s lookingh forward to it in any case.

    Sammy Finkelman (02a146)

  296. 301. Dustin (83e4a1) — 5/31/2018 @ 9:11 am

    but I still don’t understand why it’s so terrrrrrible that the meeting is pushed back.

    It’s that if it is pushed off it might be pushed off altogether, and further, this is undermining what they are trying to do and say. There really were efforts going on to get this back on track. They are going on today in New York.

    If Trump had not said it could even be June 12 and taht june 12 was possible theer would be no issue.

    from my perspective, the North Koreans are never going to follow on their end of any deal

    Maybe they are scared.

    And they don’t want Trumnp intensifying the pressure, or possibly doing something to start a revolt (Kim Jong Un may calculate that his hold on power is much more fragile than outsiders think) or bomb something.

    Sammy Finkelman (02a146)

  297. But Kim Jong Un is taking advice from China as to just how high are the possibilities of Trump doing something that he fears.

    Sammy Finkelman (02a146)

  298. Sammy

    It’s that if it is pushed off it might be pushed off altogethe

    From a negotiation standpoint, this is an advantage. The potential to walk away from a deal is power. From my perspective, this is also great because I do not believe any deal with the North Koreans can benefit us. They will take resources from us in exchange for pretending to comply but pursuing weapons. It’s a big planet and there are a lot of evil folks who would share this program abroad with the North Koreans.

    If Trump had not said it could even be June 12 and taht june 12 was possible theer would be no issue.

    There’s more going on here. Wild guess: Trump promised someone, I imagine China, that he was still working on the plan for this June 12 date, and the NYT saying the administration had ruled it out, which wasn’t really what Pottinger told them (but I think a good faith exaggeration) put Trump in a position of pushing back. But he did this poorly.

    Dustin (83e4a1)

  299. Dustin:

    They [the North Koreans] will take resources from us in exchange for pretending to comply but pursuing weapons. It’s a big planet and there are a lot of evil folks who would share this program abroad with the North Koreans.

    I think Bolton’s intention, and this is probably the view of most of the Administration officials – and note Trump actually replaced them because of teh North Korean negotiations – Tillerson is gone and also McMaster – is to, like they say, make a deal like that with Libya in 2003 – or no deal.

    They want at least an agreement in principle, and also no sanctions relief till North Korea disarms.

    And it doesn’t take long if they actually want to do it. It’s been negotiated not only with Libya, but with South Africa, and Ukraine (althouih Ukraine probably never really had control of any nuclear weapons on its territory)

    Can that happen? The North Koreans certainly wouldn’t want to do that, but Trump is hoping fear of the consequences and pressure from China might do it (Now that still leaves China in posession of nuclear weapons so maybe there’s not all that much gained, except they believe China is deterred, and they are not so sure about Kim!)

    One bad thing: Trump and others keep on promising that they don’t want to overthrow the North Korwan regime. BIG MISTAKE

    Kim would have to ask himself why. Is it not because he has nuclear weapons? The United States certainly wants to replace the government of Venezuela.

    If you want to convince Kim of that you’d have to show that you don’ty care about huann rights (except maybe for American citizens) anywhere. And even that would to convince Kim. maybe, he would say, it’s because they don’t know yet how many terroible things I have done. taht ignorance is perishable.

    No, they should say, yes we do want to erthorw the reguime. Just like we, in a hostage standoff, we want to free the hostages, and we don’t try to argue that we don’t. But we’re not motivated to do because of the risk and the loss of life. But if he makes himself a danger to more people that
    calculation changes.

    North Korea and Iran were working together in Syria till Israel bombed an important target in 2007.

    Sammy Finkelman (02a146)

  300. One problem witgh the Administration’s approach: It’s Chicken Kiev all over again. Now reagan was not afraid to say the Soviet Union should come to an end.

    Sammy Finkelman (02a146)

  301. interesting point at 296 Mr. narcisso

    happyfeet (a2827e)

  302. 301 — Dustin:

    Just consider a couple of facts that I brought out in other comments in the context of why I argue that this wasn’t an accident.

    Benjamin Wittes yesterday in a column about a new documentary called “The Fourth Estate”, which chronicles in a “fly-on-the-wall” fashion the first year of NYT reporting on Trump, referencing the NYT newsrooms in NY and DC:

    it is an institution working honorably—even movingly—to be aggressive, truthful, and fair. It is an institution that argues over the use of specific words, that checks and rechecks facts before publishing, that hates getting beat on a story but prefers getting beat to being wrong.

    And then consider the language from the story in question, including a sentence that was not generally included in the various debates about what the NYT wrote:

    As with so many issues involving this president, the views of his aides often have little effect on what he actually says. On Thursday, for example, a senior White House official told reporters that even if the meeting were reinstated, holding it on June 12 would be impossible, given the lack of time and the amount of planning needed.

    On Friday, Mr. Trump said, ‘It could even be the 12th.’

    The article wasn’t really about the status of the summit planning, or the likelihood/unlikelihood that the summit would take place on the 12th. That was merely the “example” of the issue the NYT wanted to report, i.e., that Trump doesn’t listen to his staff, or he’s ignorant of the work taking place around him. THAT was the point the NYT newsroom and editors wanted to make with the story, as its been a continuing narrative since day 1.

    Had they properly paraphrased the WH official, then the “example” would not have been inconsistent with the quote from Trump that followed — “It could even be the 12th.”

    So, based on that, I don’t think it was an accident or simple sloppiness on the part of the reporters.

    shipwreckedcrew (56b591)

  303. “242 {Beldar} But now, because you read comments at Patterico’s Pontifications, you know more about this than CNN!”

    I think that just by reading the graffiti on the wall of a bus station men’s room you’d know more about a subject than from CNN.

    ————————-
    “271.So did anyone end up engaging with my examples in this thread?”

    About the Times claim that a staffer said “impossible” and Trump said no such person exixts? Or about the Right To Try thing? or the Avenatti lawyer thing? This thread has really drifted around.

    If the first, the Times/Trump/impossible thing…then no, not really. It’s a nothingburger only kept alive by people who hate Trump so bad they can’t see straight. EVerybody else knows this is a stupid hill to die on. NYT said a staffer said impossible, Trump said there is no such person who said that. Transcript shows Trump is correct. Nobody said that. A staffer who does exist said something, but it wasn’t “impossible”.

    Now you know how the guy who goes on and on about “chemtrails” feels. He makes point after point–and everybody else politely rolls their eyes and talks about something else.

    fred-2 (ce04f3)

  304. Now Kim Jong Un is consulting Russia (or Russia feeling him out)

    https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2018/05/russian-foreign-minister-sergey-lavrov-meets-kim-jong-180531104510394.html

    Sammy Finkelman (02a146)

  305. It seems like Russia does not want Kim Jong Un to disarm in one fell swoop. Or Lavrov knows that North Korea doesn’t want tom, and is lending support.

    Meanwhile trmp says it might take more than one meeting.

    https://www.reuters.com/article/us-northkorea-usa-trump-interview-exclus/exclusive-trump-nuclear-deal-may-take-more-than-one-meeting-with-north-koreas-kim-idUSKCN1IW2CQ

    “I’d like to see it done in one meeting. But oftentimes that’s not the way deals work,” Trump said.

    “There’s a very good chance that it won’t be done in one meeting or two meetings or three meetings. But it’ll get done at some point. It may get done really nicely and really intelligently, or it may not get done intelligently. It may have to be the hard way,” he said.

    Sammy Finkelman (02a146)

  306. SWC, great points and I recognize the NYT’s obvious history. You are right about the persistent narrative that the administration is in chaos, and any conservative is well aware of the bias of this paper. Did they stretch to impossible out of confirmation bias, or did they intentionally deceive the American people to keep that narrative alive for the sake of politics?

    I won’t say you’re wrong, but regardless, Trump’s response was not that his man was misquoted and the NYT was pumping a false narrative. Truth is I don’t see how any of these stories can hurt Trump at this point. No one is on the fence about Trump’s character.

    Dustin (83e4a1)

  307. Breaking News: The summit with North Korea in Singapore is now officially back on – and scheduled for June 12.

    In an email at 3:18 EDT:

    North Korea Summit Rescheduled Says President Trump

    “June 12, we will be in Singapore,” the president told reporters

    Of course, it could be canceled again, (and re-uncanceled) so if Beldar made a bet, he should wait until June 12 to pay it off.

    https://www.nationalreview.com/news/trump-kim-summit-singapore-back-on-june-12

    North Korea Summit Back On, Trump Says

    By Mairead McArdle …June 1, 2018 3:14 PM

    Sammy Finkelman (02a146)

  308. Trump didn’t cancel the meeting for ratings. he cancelled it because things weren’t going well.

    He surprised Kim Jong Un two times – first by accepting the meeting, and second buy cancelling it.

    I think Kim will give Trump almost anyting Trump truly wants because the situation is that worrisome for the North Korean regime, and if it wasn’t North Korea would not make even the slightest concession. But he must truly want it. North Korea will be (and is) probing for what s the minimum </b? tyhe United States will accept.

    When a regime like North Korea makes a very tiny concession, it means that they are desperate.

    They got a little confidece after that second meeting in China, but trump took that away again.

    Sammy Finkelman (02a146)

  309. Guess it wasn’t “impossible” after all.

    The NYT is of course the NYT and will do what they do.

    But you would thing that at some point the neverTrumpers would get tired of face-planting in the mud.

    fred-2 (ce04f3)

  310. Yes, now its an open question how successful it will be, but unlike in 99, necessity has forced this opening on the kim dynast end.

    narciso (d1f714)

  311. 320. fred-2 (ce04f3) — 6/1/2018 @ 5:02 pm

    Guess it wasn’t “impossible” after all.

    The NYT is of course the NYT and will do what they do.

    The New York times had to go back to what was said, and this is the way they described it in an article in the Saturday, ew York Times (front page story, by Peter Baker – different author than before – continued on to page A5.)

    https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/01/world/asia/trump-north-korea-summit-kim.html

    After Mr. Trump canceled the summit meeting last week, a White House official briefing reporters said it would be extremely difficult to reschedule it for June 12 because time was so short. But the president dismissed such concerns, insisting that the two sides go ahead with the original date.

    This, however, is still not correct, because the briefer didn’t say that. He never used the words extremely difficult.

    It’s the import of what he said that is like that:

    https://www.cnn.com/2018/05/27/politics/transcript-white-house-background-briefing/index.html

    QUESTION: Can you clarify that the president announced the letter and (inaudible) summit is called off. But then later he said it’s possible the existing summit could take place or a summit at a later date.

    Is he saying that it’s possible that June 12th could still — could still happen?

    SENIOR WHITE HOUSE OFFICIAL: That — that — that’s —

    QUESTION: (Inaudible).

    SENIOR WHITE HOUSE OFFICIAL: — I think that the main point, I suppose, is that — that the ball is in North Korea’s court right now, and there — there’s really not a lot of time. We’ve — we’ve lost quite a bit of time that we would need in order to — I mean there’s been an enormous amount of preparation that’s gone on over the past few months at the White House, at State and — and with other agencies and so forth.

    But there’s a certain amount of actual dialogue that needs — needs to take place at the working level with your counterparts to ensure that the agenda is clear in the — in the minds of those two leaders when they sit down to actually — and talk, and — and negotiate, and — and hopefully, make a deal. And June 12th is in — in 10 minutes, and it’s going to be, you know…

    But the president has said that he — he has — some day, that he looks forward to — to meeting with Kim.

    Sammy Finkelman (02a146)


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