The statement from Marc Kasowitz, Trump’s lawyer, regarding former FBI director James Comey’s testimony yesterday was, basically, “see, there’s nothing there.” Meanwhile, the Washington Post had this headline: “Comey testimony threatens to deepen political crisis engulfing White House.” The difference reveals how what you think depends on which facts and statements you want to concentrate on. As…
In advance of his testimony before the Senate today, former FBI head James Comey released a written statement. In it, he describes his interactions with President Trump regarding the FBI’s investigations into Russian interference in the US election. The statement is vivid, consistent, and appears free from bias. Comey wrote memos after each interaction with Trump,…
Yesterday, a commenter on this blog wrote, “I am not interested in your personal views about the President of the United States.” Why the political analysis in a blog about writing? Because my focus on clear writing and clear thinking demands that I take on whatever writing is in the public eye — and that includes…
The new president of France, Emmanuel Macron, is getting rave reviews. Here’s a passage worth reading: [The President] has a magnetic personality and exudes positive energy, which is infectious to those around him. He has an unparalleled ability to communicate with people, whether he is speaking to a room of three or an arena of…
President Trump posted a mysterious tweet including a the non-word “covfefe” last night. Then he asked us to figure out the its true meaning. The meaning is clear: we must no longer take seriously anything this president says. Here’s the Tweet the president sent at 12:06am. Covfefe is not a word. It’s a mistake. But the…
Former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers, among many others, says that the Trump administration has made a $2 trillion accounting mistake in its budget and tax plan. That’s an oopsie half the size of the federal budget. Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin tried to defend it on CNBC, in an epic tap dance. To understand the error,…
The White House Press Office apparently sent out a typo-ridden press release suggesting that President Trump wanted to promote “lasting peach.” It was just too silly not to write about. But while many are ridiculing it, nobody has checked if it’s actually real. My research makes me suspicious. The original source of the release in…
Masha Gessen has written a must-read essay in the New York Review of Books. Her thesis is that once politicians and pseudo-journalists have robbed words of their meaning, we damage our shared understanding of reality. And that’s happening right now. Gessen should know; she was a journalist in Russia in the Soviet era. As she…
Lawyers may be verbose, but they’re precise; what they write is supposed to be unambiguous. When reading a document from a lawyer, the ambiguity typically comes, not from what’s written, but from what’s left out. For example, let’s take a look at the letter that President Trump’s lawyers wrote suggesting that he’s got no financial ties…