Trump's Charlottesville Press Conference Transcript 2
[2]
And, yeah, that's enormously significant. I mean--I do think that there's hatred and bigotry on both sides...but I also agree that there's so much of a differential that it's weird to the point of approximate falsehood to say that.
(CROSSTALK)
TRUMP: I brought it. I brought it. I brought it.
QUESTION: What did you (inaudible)?
TRUMP: As I said on – remember this – Saturday, we condemn in the strongest possible terms this egregious display of hatred, bigotry and violence. It has no place in America. And when I went on from there.
Now, here's the thing. As to–excuse me – excuse me – take it nice and easy.
Here's the thing. When I make a statement, I like to be correct. I want the facts. This event just happened. In fact, a lot of the event didn't even happen yet, as we were speaking. This event just happened. Before I make a statement, I need the facts.
So I don't want to rush into a statement. So making the statement when I made it was excellent. In fact, the young woman who I hear is a fantastic young women, and it was on NBC, her mother wrote me and said through, I guess, Twitter, social media, the nicest things and I very much appreciate that.
I hear she was a fine, a really – actually, an incredible young woman. But her mother on Twitter thanked me for what I said. And honestly, if the press were not fake and if it was honest, the press would have said what I said was very nice. But unlike you and unlike – excuse me – unlike you and unlike the media, before I make a statement, I like to know the facts.
Ok, again there's the "gathering evidence" excuse, which I don't buy--but, again, I don't think that's significant.
But his first point is basically, as I see it, the point I said he should have made above: his Saturday statement was a lot less bad than people are pretending it was:
we condemn in the strongest possible terms this egregious display of hatred, bigotry and violence. It has no place in America.He left out the controversial bit. Here's what he actually said:
“We condemn in the strongest possible terms this egregious display of hatred, bigotry, and violence. On many sides.”
Aaaaand here's where I may have made a significant mistake. Here's the way I heard Trump's Saturday statement:
“We condemn in the strongest possible terms this egregious display of hatred, bigotry, and [violence. On many sides.”]
Here'e the way almost everybody else seems to have heard it--and this seems to be the more natural reading:
“We condemn in the strongest possible terms this egregious display of [hatred, bigotry, and violence. On many sides.”]
And, yeah, that's enormously significant. I mean--I do think that there's hatred and bigotry on both sides...but I also agree that there's so much of a differential that it's weird to the point of approximate falsehood to say that.
This doesn't so much have to do with what he said yesterday, but it does cast it in a very different light.
The only other significant point here is is his effusive praise for Heather Heyer. I don't want to stretch for points, but I don't think it's completely unreasonable to suggest that, were he trying to argue for moral equivalence, we might expect him to be rather less effusive in praising Heyer and less enthusiastically condemnatory of the killer. But that's not what we find (though half of that story shows up below.)
So, conclusions: my mistake with respect to the Saturday statement may blow the whole thing. I'm a little skeptical about that, but I haven't read the transcript with that in mind. So I guess we'll see...
posted by Winston Smith at
8:37 AM
11 Comments:
First, if the reason Trump gave for waiting two days was painfully transparent BS even by his standards, how on earth is that 'not significant'? If he had a good reason, wouldn't he have given it?
And I know you're suspicious of the concept of 'dog-whistling' and other allegations that one has to read between the lines, and to a certain extent I'm sympathetic to a primary facie scepticism (I mean, look at Straussian historians of political thought), but surely you agree that what a President -- especially one such as Trump -- says and does after an event like this can't just be straightforwardly taken at face value. Obviously one important factor is how he thinks what he says is going to go over. His effusive praise of a dead woman is not evidence of anything. She's a dead woman. She was murdered. He has nothing to gain and everything to lose by casting aspersions on her.
Aha! I hear you respond. If he's thinking about how these things will go over, why on earth wouldn't he make more effort to distance himself from the Nazis and KKK, eg by releasing a statement denouncing them straight away (like, you know, everybody else)?
Well, but this is the point. He knows very well that loads of people are going to be outraged by that delay, especially when they get into second-order thinking about why he's doing it. He's not stupid in that way. But the point is: none of those people are in his base. None of them are going to support him, ever. Those who are in his base -- he's desperate to keep them on side. He's down to 34%. And this is the kind of thing they just love. Not that they're all Nazi/KKK types, by any means. But, as Jonah Goldberg said of the alt-right, they're relatively relaxed about them, and will tend to regard emphatic expressions of abhorrence toward them as thought-policing, PC sanctimony, etc, etc. Plus, I don't imagine you doubt that there are plenty of straight-up racists in the 34% anyway. So for someone who calculates the way Trump calculates (on this, see Drum's recent post on 'We polled the race stuff, and it doesn't matter', by the way), it's pretty much a no-brainer: capitulate to conventional notions of [heavy air-quotes] "minimal decency", "rejecting so-called 'racism'", etc etc, thereby avoiding, for once, being crucified by people who crucify you for everything else you do -- or start a-blowin' on that dog whistle as if you were giving your political career mouth-to-mouth resuscitation (which is actually exactly what you're doing), thereby alienating all the people who will always hate your guts anyway, and sending your dwindling base into a frenzy of jubilant mutual high-fiving?
Like I said, no-brainer.
"First, if the reason Trump gave for waiting two days was painfully transparent BS even by his standards, how on earth is that 'not significant'? If he had a good reason, wouldn't he have given it?"
I honestly don't see how this line of inquiry is important. There are a million reasons why things get delayed in politics. 90% of them we probably would never imagine. Even a half-hearted effort to speculate about them would yield several, including that he has other things to attend to, including a nuclear-armed Korea.
I honestly have a hard time believing that you think, in a context like this, it's plausible to argue, in effect "there's simply no plausible explanation other than sending an extremely obscure, entirely inarticulate and undetectable-by-us signal to his evil minions."
This honestly seems utterly implausible to me. Not that he might have been doing that. But, rather, that it is *so patently obvious* that that's what he was doing...that there is so obviously *no other possible explanation*...that this is a "no-brainer.*
Doesn't making that kind of claim worry you at all?
I mean, aside from what I've already noted, here are some other non-insane explanations:
He meant what he said on Saturday, and thought it was as unequivocal as you could get, and didn't realize immediately that it wasn't being interpreted that way.
That's *so insane* that it cannot be taken seriously?
He's stubborn?
He's a shitty President who doesn't realize what people to need to hear from him?
He is angry that people are accusing him of being a Klan and Nazi sympathizer?
That, plus stubbornness?
He's lazy and doesn't work on Sundays?
NONE of these are even possibilities?
The ONLY possibility is your rather convoluted explanation?
Because...that seems implausible to me.
I didn't say the interpretation issue was a no-brainer (although I'm close to thinking that). I said that, on my reconstruction of it, Trump's deliberative question, about what to do, give his background beliefs and attitudes, was a no-brainer.
As for the rest, Trump's record of signalling a kind of hospitality to racists (eg the Mexican judge remarks) do make the other explanations highly implausible. The idea that he's so clueless about likely public reactions that he just didn't realise that his two-day silence would be widely interpreted that way is, I think, a non-starter. He didn't win the primary, and the election, without having a kind of instinctive shrewdness about how his statements would play and how far he could go.
Lazy and doesn't work Sundays? Yeah, if you're going to press me on it, that is kind of insane and not worth taking seriously. Your other candidate explanations aren't far behind.
It's a little like (and I know there are some non-negligible points of disanalogy here): Joe, who's in very serious debt and has very few moral scruples, has a great-uncle, whom he really doesn't like and from whom he knows he stands to inherit millions; this great-uncle is drowning in the pond, and Joe really seems to be taking his time about rescuing him -- being really careful about unbuttoning his shirt, and so on.
What, you think the only non-insane explanation of Joe's leisurely manner is that he wanted his great-uncle to die so he could inherit all that cash? Talk about jumping to conclusions! Maybe he was just feeling a little under the weather! Maybe he got distracted half-way through disrobing by a math problem he'd been working on! Maybe he had no idea of the seriousness of his great-uncle's predicament! Are you seriously suggesting these are so insane that they can't be taken seriously? That the only viable explanation is your rather convoluted (and, to be honest, somewhat cynical) explanation invoking Joe's badly needing money, and his antipathy toward his great uncle, and his knowing about the massive inheritance, and on and on and on? What happened to Ockham's razor, man?
And his signal doesn't seem to have been 'extremely obscure, entirely inarticulate and undetectable-by-us'. His chief evil minion, David Duke, seems to have heard it loud and clear.
And my main point, which you didn't address, was not that there was no possible other explanation (although, again, I'm close to thinking that). It was (and I quote), if he had a good (or at least non-vicious) reason, wouldn't he have given it? Why blow up the incredulity gauge with that unutterable bilge about needing to be really careful that he has all the facts before making any public statement?
Yeah, I just can't detect the obvious and unquestionable truth of any of this.
I'm honestly having a bit of trouble following the thread of all this at this point, TBH.
We've completely left behind what he said, the clear meaning of what he said...*all* the questions about the accuracy of his actual statements...
In fact, this whole disagreement seems to go like this:
My position is:
"If we look at the plain meaning of his actual words, it is wrong to insist that he is a monster."
I still haven't seen any specific reason to think that's wrong.
I've accepted--to the extent I'm capable of doing so--the conclusion that I must be wrong, because everyone says I am. I'm trying to see whether I'm wrong about the plain meaning of his words indicating his undeniable monstrosity.
You're arguing about the explanation of a delay. You seem to be arguing, *inter alia*, the following:
Despite the fact that Trump's words on Saturday clearly repudiated the very principles of white supremacism, AND the fact that his statement on Monday did exactly what the press and public demanded--denounced the relevant groups by name...the fact that there was a two-day delay more-or-less *can only be explained* as sending signals of *approval* (???) to white supremacists.
And it still seems to me that you're saying that any other explanation is crazy.
And now you seem to be trying to say that *I'm* saying that *your* explanations are too insane to be taken seriously...which I have never claimed. I'm not saying that you're crazy. *You're* saying that *I'm* crazy.
So that seems to have been established...but I don't buy your explanation as to what the specific locus of my craziness is.
I'll admit that I'm doing at least two things at once, and am probably not reading your arguments with as much care as I should be.
And another thing...
Going back to his whole sequence of (non-)reactions to what happened in Charlottesville, if there were a plausible exculpatory explanation, don't you think it would have been seized upon with relief and gratitude by the likes of Fox News's Eboni Williams and Kat Timpf, Jonah Goldberg, Paul Ryan, Lindsay Graham, Orrin Hatch, Charles Krauthammer and all those CEOs? Are they all really running scared of the liberal mainstream media juggernaut?
Lazy and doesn't work Sundays? They were self-proclaimed neo-Nazis marching in a torchlit procession with Trump banners. Come on, Winston. Have a word with yourself.
"If we look at the plain meaning of his actual words, it is wrong to insist that he is a monster."
First, plenty of his actual words were pretty monstrous. But the more important point is that looking only at 'the plain meaning of his actual words' in this kind of context is a bit like interpreting a bridge-player's opening bids as good-faith predictions of how many tricks they're going to win.
"And his signal doesn't seem to have been 'extremely obscure, entirely inarticulate and undetectable-by-us'. His chief evil minion, David Duke, seems to have heard it loud and clear."
Yes, fair point, as I've said. But that can also be explained by basically the same phenomenon that's driving Trump's condemnation: motivated thinking.
Both Trump's opponents and the white supremacists want Trump to be saying something friendly to white supremacism.
The plain meaning of his words are against it: but nobody seems to care about that, and so I suppose I shouldn't either.
"And my main point, which you didn't address, was not that there was no possible other explanation (although, again, I'm close to thinking that). It was (and I quote), if he had a good (or at least non-vicious) reason, wouldn't he have given it? Why blow up the incredulity gauge with that unutterable bilge about needing to be really careful that he has all the facts before making any public statement?"
I just don't think this is a good point at all, and I've already addressed it. You're acting like you've never met any people. People BS about this stuff all the time.
You're argument is: Trump gave a boilerplate due diligence / I'm-a-thoughtful-person reply; the only possible explanation for that is sending a super-secret batsignal to David Duke.
You have, for example, dismissed out of hand the fact that a President--even Donald Trump--has a lot of balls in the air at every moment...but he cannot reasonably say "I had other things to do."
But I've already dealt with this, and, honestly, I just have no doubt that your position on this particular point is simply wrong. And the very fact that you are leaning so heavily on this baroque speculation...not even about something he said, but about a dead space between saying things... Well...honestly, I'm just not able to see this as a plausible set of points.
And that's before even getting serious about thinking about your position. So when did Trump make his Saturday comments? And when did it become clear that public sentiment was against them? Saturday night? What time? It is out of the realm of possibility that Trump went to bed Saturday night not realizing that he needed to jump through the name-the-names hoop? What time is it obvious that that this was clear to him on Sunday? How long was the gap, really, between the time he realized that something else had to be said...*and the time he said exactly what people were claiming that he would not say because he is a secret Nazi*?????
I'm not saying your position can't be true. I'm saying that it strikes me as being almost entirely speculative, extremely implausible, and driven by antecedent hatred of Trump. (I'm not saying that the latter is unjustified, note.)
I personally would never rely on such an argument in any matter of any importance.
But I'm actually totally f*cking worn out by all this, so I'm sure that's cranky and overly-verbose.
Again, I must be wrong--but I don't think any of this shows why.
Your argument is: Trump gave a boilerplate due diligence / I'm-a-thoughtful-person reply; the only possible explanation for that is sending a super-secret batsignal to David Duke.
If I understand you correctly, I think you're losing track of the dialectic. I didn't say that Trump's shamelessly absurd 'I need to weigh all the evidence before making a public pronouncement' excuse was a super-secret bat-signal to David Duke. I said his two-day delay was a supersecret bat-signal to David Duke (although not sufficiently supersecret not to be picked up by everyone, including David Duke). I claimed his shamelessly absurd excuse was evidence that he didn't have a publicly-avowable reason for the delay, and so, indirectly, evidence for the delay being a super-secret bat-signal. And I still say those things.
Please, Winston, stop with the 'What did he know when he went to bed? At what point did he realise he had to jump through these hoops?' There were numerous neo-Nazis. That's not what their enemies called them -- that's their self-description. They were marching with torches at night on the grounds of one of this country's most venerable universities. And they described themselves as supporters of Trump. Pretty much every other prominent Republican denounced them, as such, more or less immediately. Making it clear that he didn't want their support was not 'jumping through hoops'. It was something it was vitally important for him to make as clear as possible as quickly as possible. And that would be true even if there weren't already a cloud of non-fantastical suspicion hanging over him with respect to his ideological associations and allegiances. I can't imagine for a moment any other president in my lifetime dragging his feet over something like this. I find it hard to believe that you can imagine it either.
One of us definitely needs to stop with something, but it isn't me.
Actually, I don't think that *you* are following *my* arguments. I didn't *say* that you said that his boilerplate excuse was the batsignal---I said that you said that *his delay* was the bat signal. Which is, in fact, what you said.
And what I said--rightly--was that there are a very large number of other explanations for that. which there are.
And if we're going to be serious about this, we need to have the timeline right. This would have been Saturday and Sunday night that's at issue, not Friday night, when the tiki-torch march occurred.
And I'm dead serious about the other points.
Your position seems to require us to think that Trump realized and accepted immediately that his statement was not well-received. I say--among all the other relevant facts, including the point about him having to attend to our NK nuke problem and everything else...not to mention his being notoriously lazy--we need to recognize that the White House may not have understood how bad things were until they watched the Sunday morning talk shows.
Your position is that there's just no plausible explanation for not releasing a new statement until Monday...other than intentionally signalling the Nazis.
This simply isn't true. It's not close to being true. It's barely even on the table as a real option--much less is it *the only possibility.*
It just isn't.
I'm just losing my patience with this point. It seems utterly absurd to me.
Honestly, if this is the kind of argument it takes in order to defend the Trump's-a-monster position, I'm starting to think that I may not have been wrong after all.
If you've got something better than this, I'm begging you to deploy it.
Again, my apologies for having lost my temper on this one. We're just on wavelengths too different here to find any common ground, apparently.
Still more apologies, DJ.
You're doing God's work, trying to keep me on the straight and narrow.
Even though you're wrong about this two day thing.
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