White House Caught Doctoring Transcript For Second Time

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.

Yesterday’s televised session on immigration is being spun as evidence that President Trump isn’t senile. You might think Trump’s supporters would be touting something a little more upbeat than “not senile,” but that’s hard to do when Trump demonstrated virtually no understanding of a subject that has literally been his signature issue for the past two years. Pretty much the best you can say about Trump’s performance is that he didn’t fall asleep or start telling stories about his old days on The Apprentice.

Matt Yglesias has the right take on this. As he (and everyone else) has noted, Trump was obviously confused even about DACA, the topic that Congress has to decide right away:

The key exchange of the afternoon came when Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) asked the president if he might like to completely abandon his administration’s stated position on the issue under discussion and, instead, adopt the Democratic position. At this point, you would expect a Republican Party politician to restate the Republican Party’s position on the issue….Trump, instead, just said he agreed with Feinstein!

The Washington Post picks up the story:

So pliant was Trump that when Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), one of the most liberal members of the chamber, asked if he would support “a clean DACA bill” that protects the dreamers with no other conditions, the president sounded amenable. “Yeah, I would like to do it,” Trump said.

Trump’s apparent concession so alarmed House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) that he interjected himself, although he was careful only to gently contradict the president….McCarthy apparently was not the only one concerned by Trump’s seeming agreement with Feinstein. When the White House released its official transcript Tuesday afternoon, the president’s line — “Yeah, I would like to do it” — was missing.

A White House official said that any omission from the transcript was unintentional and that the context of the conversation was clear.

“Unintentional.” Sure it was. Just like it was last July.

This episode shows not just that the White House is dishonest, but that it’s stupid. Doctoring a transcript to remove the one line that everyone gasped at in real time is idiotic. Apparently one of the new tasks of the press in the Trump era is going to be scouring White House transcripts for errors. Unintentional though they may be, surely we’re all interested in keeping these historical records accurate. Right?

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate