Trump’s bonehead mistake about the New York Times article:
The failing @nytimes does major FAKE NEWS China story saying "Mr.Xi has not spoken to Mr. Trump since Nov.14." We spoke at length yesterday!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 10, 2017
Oh Donnie Donnie Donnie. That’s not what it said. You changed one crucial letter, and it changes everything.
Here’s what the Times article actually said:
The concession was clearly designed to put an end to an extended chill in the relationship between China and the United States. Mr. Xi, stung by Mr. Trump’s unorthodox telephone call with the president of Taiwan in December and his subsequent assertion that the United States might no longer abide by the One China policy, had not spoken to Mr. Trump since Nov. 14, the week after he was elected.
HAD not spoken. The pluperfect. That’s the verb tense you use when you’re talking about more than one past event, and you need to distinguish the earlier from the later. It’s a sophisticated concept, yes, but most native speakers manage to pick it up. That’s what’s going on in that final sentence – Mr Xi HAD not spoken to Mr. Trump since Nov. 14…until yesterday’s conversation, which is the entire subject of the article. Dense Donnie somehow managed to interpret that as the Times saying, in an article about his conversation with Xi, that they had no conversation.
And he has the nuclear codes.
Comments
19 responses to “Verb tenses”
Well, at least the verbs ain’t the only thing that’s tense in Trumpville.
“And he has the nuclear codes”.
Trump probably only has the codes that open the Whitehouse garage, I hope.
And let’s all hope, in case he does have the actual loaded stuff, that he will mix up the characters again and only fire a dud. Unless of course he can watch Pres Sec Sean White House Bagdad Bob read the password out on tv, exclusive for the Prez. (Oops, did I say that out loud?)
Anyway, he doesn’t wanna hear about them times or them tempi, just thempusses?
Oooh actually, what if they makes the nuclear codes some extremely-hard-to-spell word like ‘precedent’ or ‘attacker’! Then we could safeguard against Trump launching before he consults with others!
Maybe they can make the nuclear password something like “IHAVETINYHANDS.” That might give him time to cool down, or allow one of his handlers to distract him by calling out that he’s on tv again, come see.
Trump is certainly clueless enough to not know the difference between “has spoken” and “had spoken”, or – for that matter – between supporting and criticizing “the incompetent malevolence with which [the Muslim Ban] was promulgated”, but he is also dishonest enough to not care about accurately representing his sources. In this respect he resembles nothing so much as (other) creationists and climate change deniers who quote-mine statements made by real scientists for wordings they can take out of context, or otherwise distort, to make them appear to say the opposite of what they’re actually saying. And he has the nerve to accuse others of being “crooked” or spreading “fake news”…
Oh, I wish you could make that go away by changing one letter – how much safer would we feel if you simply wrote "He HAD the nuclear codes"?
^ Ah, clever!
“He had them, but mislaid them. LOSER!”
The mislaid codes would be in good company, what with him already losing any credibility, good sense, humanity, and ethics he might once have had.
Guys, he claims to have the best words – and he does, ok? – but he never said anything about tenses. Trump: 1, losers: 0.
I’m afraid it won’t matter how hard the code words are. He’ll just leave them lying around where anyone can see them, like he apparently did with this key and lockbag to classified information.
http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/319038-dem-senator-calls-out-trump-for-leaving-key-to-classified-info#
It is interesting to see how far a man has been able to coast without (apparently) the ability to read…
Well, the “D” in HAD isn’t an Easy D.
He doesn’t understand these perfect verbs, does he? Last week he said “Frederick Douglass is an example of somebody who HAS DONE an amazing job.” That’s the present perfect—used to place past events within a time frame that exists now (e.g. “He has talked to him today” sounds OK, but “He has talked to him yesterday” doesn’t). If someone’s dead, we use past tense. Or perhaps (I’m going out on a limb here with this wild hypothesis) he actually does have an intuitive understanding of basic grammar, he just didn’t have a clue who Douglass is/was.
http://i.imgur.com/eKBrDsk.mp4
Gordon, I’m going you one further – he has no clue about basic grammar AND he has no clue who Douglass was.
Lady M. That was intentional; you know how The Donald likes to flash the gold things.
Yes yes. Just stay away from the edge of the ledge.