Please tell me where the complex parsing of this quote is required.
Trump said that "were very fine people, on both sides." Parsed, that means that he was asserting that there were at least two fine people on each side.
He also said "The following day it looked like they had some rough, bad people — neo-Nazis, white nationalists, whatever you want to call them. But you had a lot of people in that group that were there to innocently protest, and very legally protest.” That statement excludes neo-Nazis from the "fine people" categorization, as I parse it. It seems reasonable that there could very well have been at two innocent protesters who happened to be in the protester group amongst all those "bad people." At least there's no way to prove otherwise.
Trump's statement and his intent were entirely clear and a person had to try really hard to misunderstand it.
I disagree with both those assertions, but, as I said, if you make the effort to parse it, as I did, you can find plausible deniability of the charge against him. Of course, parsing is not required. I parsed it because that's what I do. I do work at objectivity and I do subscribe to the notion that words mean what they mean. So, I looked at his actual words. Most people didn't. Most people looked at it in context and interpreted his intent, the spirit of Trump, rather than the letter of what he said. If you look only at the letter of what he said, independent of all else, Trump has plausible deniability.
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One oddity I have noticed in talking to you, one manifestation of how far around the bend you have gotten, is that, on the very rare occasions where I make a comment that supports you, you fail to recognize it and, rather, argue against my support. Strange, indeed. |
