Trust but verify
Rep. Adam Schiff, who chairs the House Intelligence Committee, said that as far as he’s concerned there’s “direct evidence” of collusion between Donald Trump’s presidential campaign and Russia. Specifically, Schiff says that the 2016 offer from a Russian lawyer for information on Hillary Clinton to members of Trump’s campaign is the smoking gun. “I think there is direct evidence in the emails from the Russians through their intermediary offering dirt on Hillary Clinton as part of what is described in writing as the Russian government effort to help elect Donald Trump,” Schiff said on CBS’ Face the Nation, when he was asked if he had “direct evidence of collusion with Russia.”
“They offer that dirt,” Schiff went on. “There is an acceptance of that offer in writing from the President’s son Don Junior and there is overt acts in furtherance of that.” Beyond that though “there’s also abundant circumstantial evidence,” Schiff added. “There is, for example, evidence of Manafort sharing internal polling data with someone linked to the Russian intelligence services.”
Direct, and circumstantial. Both. Ticktickticktick
Schiff wasn’t alone in talking about evidence that incriminates Trump in terms of Russia contacts. Sen. Mark Warner, who is the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, said there is “enormous evidence” of possible collusion between Trump’s campaign and Russia during the election. “I’m going to reserve judgment until I’m finished, but there’s no one who can factually say there isn’t plenty of evidence of collaboration or communication between the Trump Organization and Russians,” Warner told NBC’s Meet the Press. “I have never in my lifetime seen a presidential campaign, from a person of either party, have this much outreach to a foreign country and a foreign country that the intelligence community [says], and our committee has validated, intervened massively in our election and intervened with an attempt to help one candidate, Donald Trump, and hurt another, Hillary Clinton.”
But he says there was no collusion. Can’t we just take him at his word?
There are any number of possible reasons behind Trump’s steadfast denial of “No collusio.”
He does have a unique way with words, novel pronunciation, unorthodox stressing of words. He could be confusing collusion with collision. Simple mistake; easily done. Wording is hard. I can imagine his attention wandering after the first one or two syllables. As he hasn’t collided with Russia (unless he falls down on that notorious video we’ve alll heard about), then he can claim complete innocence.
His speech draws from a rather small pool of oft-repeated words and phrases, much like Newspeak. Admit it, how often (at least before the 2016 election) did you ever use “collusion” in a sentence? For Trump himself, it would probably be much less frequently still, especially before looking it up. If you don’t have the word, you can’t perform the deed.
Besides, he hasn’t yet self-identified as Russian.
It’s about time. There’s also been direct evidence of obstruction of justice for nearly two years now, though I guess in both cases investigations and repercussions were only ever going to take place when Dems swept congress.
As Richard Nixon might have said, that depends surely on how many days of the week that has to be operable, whether as a recommendation or as a directive.
On Mondays only: a bit of an impost, except for those still sleeping off their weekend festivities. And remember, some are still sleeping one off come Friday. Plus, a lie might have been told by Trump over the weekend, and they could have missed it.
Two days (eg Monday and Friday). That is much harder, because a lie could occur over the weekend OR through the week: a much greater probability of occurrence. Better say, Monday and Tuesday. Or better, Sunday and Monday, because Trump may have put in a guest appearance at some church, especially if he is to be centre of attention, as in star attraction, and may have refrained from lying for religious reasons, or from simple political expediency. Also, as Trump appears to have a short-term memory problem, come Friday he will likely be most vague in his own mind as to what he said the previous Monday. So best Monday and Tuesday, or Thursday and Friday. And so on.
The problem compounds as the number of days in the take-him-at-his-word period increases.
7 days, forget it.
6 days: perhaps. 5 days best prepare for some truth, some lying. And so on.
What I will say is this. You can definitely take him at his word for one second, because the shortest possible lie is ‘yes’, or alternatively ‘no’. And it generally takes him more than one second to get either of those words out.
Hope this helps.