Sarah Sanders Provides Proof Trump Was Misquoted By The Wall Street Journal
“I” v. “I’d” makes a big difference: one is unfounded braggadocio; the other, wistful optimism about what might have been
In this time of rampant Trump Derangement Syndrome saturating formerly credible news outlets, it’s become the norm to expect the media to lie intentionally about President Trump.
While it does not appear that the Wall Street Journal was lying intentionally, it has become clear that they (willfully?) misheard a quote from the president and then ran with its implications in a full article.
In “Donald Trump Signals Openness to North Korea Diplomacy in Interview: President cites a positive relationship with nation’s leader; also accuses Steve Bannon of betrayal,” the WSJ reports:
President Donald Trump said he believes he has developed a positive relationship with North Korea’s leader despite their mutual public insults, suggesting he is open to diplomacy after months of escalating tensions over Pyongyang’s nuclear-weapons program.
“I probably have a very good relationship with Kim Jong Un, ” Mr. Trump said in an interview Thursday with The Wall Street Journal. “I have relationships with people. I think you people are surprised.”
Asked if he has spoken with Mr. Kim, Mr. Trump said: “I don’t want to comment on it. I’m not saying I have or haven’t. I just don’t want to comment.”
This is a complete misrepresentation of what the president said. Trump did not boast that “he believes he has developed a positive relationship with North Korea’s leader despite their mutual public insults.”
The implication here is that Trump’s “belief” in this positive relationship defies public evidence to the contrary (“mutual public insults”). In short, according to this reading, the president is lying at best and living in a fantasy world at worst.
White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders released the audio of this portion of the interview, pointing out that the president said “I’d probably have a very good relationship with Kim Jong Un” not ““I probably have a very good relationship with Kim Jong Un.”
Here is the official audio showing WSJ misquoting @POTUS pic.twitter.com/wVwoafYkHg
— Kayleigh McEnany 45 Archived (@PressSec45) January 14, 2018
Personally, I would prefer to have more context from the White House, but even in this brief clip, it’s clear that the president said “I’d probably have a very good relationship with Kim Jong Un.”
Not only is it easily heard, but Trump’s inflection changes, becoming more upbeat and optimistic, (and, to my ear) almost wistful. This change in tone also indicates that he’s not stating a present fact but is expressing either hope for the future or a desire for things to have worked out differently between the two world leaders.
Trump says he said “I’d” — a contraction for “would” — that changes the meaning of what he said. In the Wall Street Journal version, Trump and Kim are friendly. In Trump’s version, such a relationship might be possible under some other circumstance.
The difference is no small matter. Based on its version of Trump’s quote, the Journal reported that “Trump said he believes he has developed a positive relationship with North Korea’s leader despite their mutual public insults, suggesting he is open to diplomacy after months of escalating tensions over Pyongyang’s nuclear-weapons program.”
Although the White House did not provide a fuller recording, the Wall Street Journal has posted its transcript of the interview. The President asserts that China is “helping us a lot with North Korea,” indicating quite clearly that he does not consider his present relationship with Kim Jong Un as “very good.”
Mr. Trump: . . . . We are—when I campaigned I said we’ll either renegotiate Nafta or I’ll terminate it.
And nothing’s changed, I have fulfilled many of my campaign promises. One of the promises that you know is being very seriously negotiated right now is the wall and the wall will happen. And if you look—point, after point, after point—now we’ve had some turns. You always have to have flexibility. As an example, we’ve been much tougher on China, but not nearly as tough as I would be, but they are helping us a lot with North Korea.
And you see in North Korea what’s happening with North Korea all of a sudden. China’s been helping us a lot, so you can veer a little bit differently, but for the most part everything I’ve said I’ve done.
. . . . WSJ: And you mentioned the link between China and North Korea. We talked about that a little bit the last time we were in here.
Mr. Trump: Right.
WSJ: Is that—does that link still exist for you? Do you feel like China’s been helpful enough…
(CROSSTALK)
Mr. Trump: Not helpful enough, but they’ve been very helpful. Let’s put it this way, they’ve done more for me than they ever have for any American president. They still haven’t done enough. But they’ve done more for me than they have, by far, for any—I have a very good relationship with President Xi. I like him. He likes me. We have a great chemistry together. He’s—China has done far more for us than they ever have for any American president. With that being said, it’s not enough. They have to do more.
The transcript reveals that the interviewer misheard Trump at the time of the interview. His follow-up question/s support this:
WSJ: Just to be clear, you haven’t spoken to the North Korean leader, I mean when you say a relationship with Korea—
Mr. Trump: I don’t want to comment on it—I don’t want to comment, I’m not saying I have or I haven’t. But I just don’t—
WSJ: Some people would see your tweets, which are sometimes combative towards Kim Jong Un…
Mr. Trump: Sure, you see that a lot with me and then all of a sudden somebody’s my best friend. I could give you 20 examples. You give me 30. I’m a very flexible person.
The president, however, was not, as the WSJ interviewer appears to assume, blustering about a clearly non-existent positive relationship with North Korea.
Despite being shut down (“I don’t want to comment on it”) and Trump’s repeated assertion that China is the key to a better relationship with North Korea, the WSJ interviewer pursued his own sense that he was “catching” the president in an obvious lie.
Trump was not amused.
https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/952525384242876416
https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/952526145064505345
The WSJ has responded by releasing their own recording and a statement that they “stand by what it reported.” Listen (don’t read the transcript as it plays because the intent here is to make you hear what you read):
We have reviewed the audio from our interview with President Trump, as well as the transcript provided by an external service, and stand by what we reported. Here is audio of the portion the White House disputes. https://t.co/eWcmiHrXJg pic.twitter.com/bx9fGFWaPw
— The Wall Street Journal (@WSJ) January 14, 2018
Trump is being accused of “attacking” the WSJ, but after eight years of President Bush refusing to push back against the media, it’s refreshing to see a Republican president refuse to let the media get away with misleading quotes.
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Comments
this story kind of dovetails with the ‘Sh**hole’, how many people at the meeting and only one heard the comment, and he has a history of misquoting comments from meetings before. By the way defending one’s self is not attacking. time to replace fake news with sh** news.
Yeah, and Tricky Dick Durbin is a known liar.
Never trust the Wall Street Jour-Ho.
Wall Street Journ-Ho.
The recording is hard to actually decipher ,but tie goes to the runner and WSJ should just admit it is not real clear and they will defer to Trumps version.
I think Trump has made the statement in the past that he would be a friend to the Norks, if only for Big Un. Let’s look for that statement.
There is a reason that Nixon recorded everything.
On a positive note, this is hard evidence that the WSJ is part of the “fake news” racket.
It’s commonly believed that the WSJ is different from the other mainstream newspapers, even that it’s a “conservative” paper. This is true only of the editorial pages; the news reporting has always been done by the same leftist activists who do it for all the other papers.
Only a leftist would be stupid enough to go to journalism school. And only a leftist trust fund baby could afford it.
I don’t think it’s possible to go to journo school and be conservative. These counterfeit grad schools have required courses that are political litmus tests. For instance, ed schools have “teaching for social justice” required courses. And you actually have to believe in it. You can’t argue with the professor. And you can’t fake it. You’ll flunk out.
I know some conservative former journalists. Key word, former. They went through grad school years ago before the barbarians invaded and took them over. Or, they broke into the business years ago as it’s possible to become a reporter without going to grad school. But they got tired of that perpetual nauseous feeling and went into something respectable like PR or advertising.
Wall Street Journ-Ho has been fake news for years and years and years now!
Silly me. I remember when quotation marks were used to frame what someone actually said.
I’m amazed how incompetent journalists are. Maybe we should send them to college for training in Communications and Ethics.
silly you – they all have degrees in those subjects – shows what kind of a participation trophy education gets you !
So that fake news is that Trump said he has a good relationship with a murderous tyrant.
The reality is that Trump supposes, or wishes, that, in an ideal world, he’d have a good relationship with a murderous tyrant.
This is better how…?
Wait, do we really need to explain the benefits of a good relationship between the leaders of nuclear powers? Especially when “good relationship” really means, “I won’t nuke you if you don’t nuke me”?
How was it better, MrSatyre, for President Reagan to work so hard to develop a good relationship with Mikhail Gorbachev, leader of what Reagan himself dubbed the “evil empire”? Do the words “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!” have no meaning to you? Did it escape your notice that while Mr. Gorbachev was no longer in power when the wall came down, his policies of glasnost and perestroika ultimately led to that result?
It’s not rocket science. A better relationship between our president and NoKo’s would be less likely to combust into actual (even nuclear) war. I don’t get what’s hard about this. 🙁
Sadly yes you do have to explain such things to the demented fools on the left.
Your error is in the assumption that we have a shared goal of a more peaceful world. Sadly, that’s not true. In all issues, the primary goal is to disagree with and demonize the opposition. THAT’S the state of our political system, and it’s truly pathetic.
What does it say about the sheer ARROGANCE of the WSJ when they won’t admit that they blew it. Can you imagine?
This incident is just so emblematic of what is wrong with big media. Too big to fail has morphed into too big TO BE WRONG.
Disgusting, and the unprincipalled owner just stairs off into space. Duh.
Yeah, the blew it surely as Dick.
“they”
When you consider the past 4 US presidents and their lame attempts to put NoKo into a box you can see what having a “Good” relationship with him means. Kin Un or his late father made fools of all 4. They like many appeasers think that if we can only talk to them we can reach some kind of peace accord. Watch the movie “The Darkest Hour” and it will disabuse you of those silly thoughts about negotiating with a tyrant. The one and only sane way to handle NoKo is total quarantine and blockade. The other option is not acceptable to any of NoKo’s neighbors, namely war. So with a naval blockade, Chinese no trade and making a no-fly zone around their nation, then we might get to some kind of negotiating table. But never by smiling and shaking hands with Kim.
And my primary focus in the 1990s, as an Naval intel officer was North Korea. And like the old saying goes, you can lead a horse to water but you can’t make him drink.
By that I mean there was no intelligence failure. There was a leadership failure. You can provide people with all the information in the world and if they don’t want to use that information, they won’t. But they’ll blame us. Mostly because they can get away with it as we’re sworn to secrecy. And only someone named Clinton can get away with violating those NDAs.
Somewhere I have a nice letter from ADM William O. Studeman, thanking me for a briefing I gave him on North Korea. Back when he was Deputy Director of the CIA. I think I’ve said enough.
PS: I have an extremely negative view of the CIA. When I said there was no intelligence failure I was speaking of the five armed services. The CIA is political.
ADM Studeman was an extremely nice, considerate guy. And it’s not classified that I briefed him on North Korea because it’s in his unclassified letter.
It’s clear. MSM lied, again.
What can be done – that is the $1,000,000,000 question?!
This has been nagging at me lately, too, DINORightMarie. The left has a great racket here; they publish lies which get gobbled up by the uniformed masses of “resist we much” loons, and then are shown later to have lied. This fact is buried on page 12 days later. No one hears about it but the most informed (i.e LI readers and their ilk).
Flash to social media: there are people on there still claiming that President looked directly at the sun during the recent eclipse. He didn’t. We know this. Yet, the lie persists and is “truth” to anti-Trumpers.
How on earth do we combat that? I really don’t know. But I think we were on the right track in ’09 and ’10 when we spoke of “taking our country back.” That rallying cry meant more than a distrust of big government but a recognition that we’ve ceded our nation to a bunch of anarchists, commies, and socialists. They control our television and movie content, increasingly control our social media voice, and we’re lagging horrendously in our K-12 school system (a shockingly underperforming area in global terms; we’re no longer ranked at the top and won’t be again unless we make some serious changes.).
Until we have a better plan, it’s important to keep pointing out the nefarious and ill-willed attacks on Trump by the media. We must be making some kind of difference because the media is losing trust by the minute (viewers and readers, too).
Imagine what we could have accomplished if we hadn’t had Obama’s IRS, EPA, NSRB, TSA, propagandist media, and etc. pointedly attacking anyone affiliated with the Tea Party.
It’s a tough question, DRM, and I just don’t have the answer. I do know that we will keep exposing the media for what it is and work to get our message out to the uniformed, disinterested voter.
We have a great advantage in President Trump. He’s not going to take this stuff lying down, and his pushback alone is getting the truth out to leftist zombies.
Excellent post, Fuzzy.
“[W]e’ve ceded our nation to a bunch of anarchists, commies, and socialists. They control our television and movie content, increasingly control our social media voice, and we’re lagging horrendously in our K-12 school system (a shockingly underperforming area in global terms; we’re no longer ranked at the top and won’t be again unless we make some serious changes.)”
The quote above is what fuels my cynicism. We are achieving crisis levels of stupid, and, unfortunately, we have paired ignorance with praise and participation trophies. To quote Epictetus, “It is impossible for a man to learn what he thinks he already knows,” so how do we convince people in the middle class, who are working two jobs just to make ends meet, to spend the time learning about what makes a civilization work and how we might fix the one we have?
Fuzzy Slippers, our libel and slander laws are going to get changed.
Then we’ll see the Incredibly Shrinking Lyin’ MSM.
Not without a constitutional amendment they won’t be. Congress can’t overturn Times v Sullivan.
“It is wrong to speak ill of the dead. On the other hand, it is an insult to the intelligence of the American people to pretend that Walter Cronkite was the “voice of God” and “universally credible,” as Mara Liasson put it on Fox News Sunday. The terrible truth is that Walter Cronkite symbolized liberal media bias and used that bias with disastrous consequences for our nation and the world. His latest cause was world government and the destruction of American sovereignty.”
http://www.aim.org/aim-column/the-terrible-truth-about-walter-cronkite/
if you couldn’t trust Uncle Wally, who could you trust ?
F Walter Cronkite. A piece of human garbage that normalized lying to the American people by the media.
Perfect timing. What WC said before his broadcast:
“First and simplest, the Viet Cong suffered a military defeat,” he reported. “Its missions proved suicidal. If they had intended to stay in the cities as a negotiating point, they failed at that. The Vietnamese army reacted better than even its most ardent supporters had anticipated. There were no defections from its rank, as the Viet Cong apparently had expected. And the people did not rise to support the Viet Cong, as they were also believed to have expected.”
Then, he lied in the broadcast to the American people. Scum.
https://freenorthcarolina.blogspot.com/2018/01/lost-cronkite-broadcast-reveals-180.html
“While it does not appear that the Wall Street Journal was lying intentionally…”
Huh. It appears to me they are lying intentionally.
They lie all the time, especially about Trump.
Wow – but Trump NEVER lies – he ALWAYS lies.
Hahahahahahahahhahaahahahahahhahaa…he’s living rent free in yer head! Hahahahahhahahahhahahahahaa 🙂
Fly’s like shit.
Well I listened to both recordings. For the White House one I had to turn the computer volume all the way up. He said, “I’d”
For the WSJ audio I didn’t need to turn the volume up. It was pretty clear that he said “I’d”
All this does is hurt the WSJ because it makes them look stupid and petty that they can’t admit they made a mistake.
Old memories flood in – who can forget:
“It depends on what the meaning of the word ‘is’ is. If the–if he–if ‘is’ means is and never has been, that is not–that is one thing. If it means there is none, that was a completely true statement….Now, if someone had asked me on that day, are you having any kind of sexual relations with Ms. Lewinsky, that is, asked me a question in the present tense, I would have said no. And it would have been completely true.”
And like everything else Left, your memories are false. See, reporting accurately what’s clearly on the tape required no interpretation, just the ability to not lie.
To hear Trump say he had a good relationship should have peaked the reporters interest to ask Trump to tell him about this “hidden” relationship. But the reporter knew he had a GREAT story and he ran to the nearest cell phone. Why didn’t WSJ ask even one question about this amazing comment by Trump?
I used to have a subscription to the WSJ.
It started moving leftwards about the second term of Bush 43 and I found the creep slow, but steady up to the election for 44’s second term when it started to exhort all of Obama’s accomplishments.
When it became more and more difficult to find news articles that didn’t employ worshipful adjectives praising President Obama’s every breath (whatever), I dropped my subscription.
Even 3 day old fish refuse to be wrapped in the Wall Street Journal!
Who keeps a fish for three days? And I say this a former proprietor of a Sushi restaurant.
Fun fact. If you walk into a sushi place and smell fish it’s not going to be good sushi. You especially know when everything the serve is smothered in Sriracha sauce.
But you don’t necessarily have to walk out, if they’re willing to pour you free Tequila.