Responsibility and Evidence in Trumpian Discourse

Trumped Up Words Adam Hodges November 3, 2017 It started as an innocuous press conference in the White House Rose Garden. The President and Senate Majority Leader would meet with reporters to emphasize, with typical Trumpian overstatement, that they were “closer than ever before.” Then Trump got that question about the death of four soldiers killed in Niger: “And what do you have to say about that?” He replied that he had written letters to the families, which would be “going out tonight.” Then, he said he would “call the parents…

How ‘Flip’ Entered the Story of the Russia Investigation

How ‘Flip’ Entered the Story of the Russia Investigation – Word’s history is tied to prosecutors, mobsters and novelists By Ben Zimmer Nov. 3, 2017 10:22 a.m. ET On Monday, court documents revealed that George Papadopoulos, a former foreign-policy adviser to Donald Trump, had entered into a plea agreement after his July arrest and had tried to cooperate with Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation. This promoted speculation that the Mueller team may have “flipped” Mr. Papadopoulos. As a HuffPost headline read about the investigation into alleged Russian interference in the 2016 presidential campaign, “Robert Mueller Flipped…

Lookups For ‘Betrayal’ Spike After Reporters Ask Spicer To Define the Word

JAN 31, 2017  Spicer: ‘I’m not going to define the word’ Lookups for betrayal spiked on January 31, 2017. During a contentious press conference, President Trump’s press secretary Sean Spicer used the word betrayal to describe the firing of Acting Attorney General Sally Yates for refusing to order the Justice Department to defend the executive order regarding immigration. One reporter asked, “Is it a betrayal? That’s a very odd word,” and another asked, “Why use the word betrayal?” Finally, a reporter asked Spicer, “Define the word betrayal” to which he…

We Uncovered the Hidden Patterns in Clinton and Trump’s Most Common Phrases

Linguists dissected over 100,000 words from their speeches. By Cara Giaimo And Sarah Laskow JULY 21, 2016 The Republican National Convention is entering its final night, but people can’t stop talking about the words in Melania Trump’s Monday evening speech—because she borrowed a significant amount of them from a 2008 speech by Michelle Obama. After journalist Jarret Hill noticed the lifted material and the story spread, the Trump campaign claimed that Melania Trump had simply been using “common words,” and “phrases [Americans] have heard before.” There has been plenty of…