monitoring Trump and relevant contemporary events

...believe Trump said “shithouse” rather than “shithole.” (The New York Times has a source saying the same thing.)

This is apparently all the difference that they needed to issue their statement, which assured that “we do not recall the president saying these comments specifically.” That last word lingers hugely; it means they get to deny one specific word and feel good about having been technically honest. Never mind that the second syllable of that word doesn't change the meaning of Trump's comments one iota.

The “shithouse defense,” explained: how Trump’s allies are trying to dig him out of his “shithole”

In the days following a report that President Trump disparaged immigration from “shithole countries” in an Oval Office meeting with lawmakers, the White House has settled on a bizarre response.

Publicly, they deny that Trump ever said “shithole countries.”

And then privately, they explain those hard-to-believe denials by claiming he said “shithouse countries” instead.

The strange spectacle made its way to Capitol Hill Tuesday morning, when Secretary of Homeland Security Kirstjen Nielsen repeated that denial in sworn testimony before a Senate committee.

“I did not hear that word used,” Nielsen said under oath, about “shithole.” When asked if Trump used a similar term or vulgar language to describe certain countries, she wouldn’t deny it. “The conversation was very impassioned,” she said. “The president used tough language in general, as did other congressmen in the room.”

Anonymous Republican sources have pushed the story that Trump in fact used the phrase “shithouse countries.” According to the Washington Post’s Josh Dawsey, Robert Costa, and Ashley Parker, Sens. Tom Cotton (R-AR) and David Perdue (R-GA) told the White House that’s what they remember Trump saying in the meeting.

Trump has apparently decided that the controversy is hurting him politically, so his allies are using this minor discrepancy to justify public denials that he said “shithole.” This, the Post reporters wrote, was Cotton and Perdue’s private rationale for their Friday statement claiming they “do not recall the President saying those [shithole] comments specifically.”

Now, some anonymous Republican spinners are going even further, telling reporters that the term “shithouse” gets Trump off the hook from accusations of racism. Michael Isikoff said he was told that Trump was “thinking about real estate,” and Scott Wong said he was told Trump simply meant countries without plumbing.

Meanwhile; largely ignored in favor of curse words/racism from our President:

Trump is paving the way for a lot more than just Medicaid work requirements (Vox)

Alex Jones claims false report of missile headed towards Hawaii was orchestrated by Trump’s opponents to embarrass him

Two or three days ago, I wrote here that I was eager to hear what Alex Jones was going to say about the real reason for the false alarm re missile(s) heading towards Hawaii. I didn't have to wait long.

Quote:

Alex Jones claims false report of missile headed towards Hawaii was orchestrated by Trump’s opponents to embarrass him

MM

Isn't that just special. I love the modern American right because honesty and sanity. And charitableness.

: I wasn’t going to shoot a video or live report today because we didn’t have enough information. Then I began to get calls from my CIA sources, my high-level Army intelligence sources, and analysis from my Delta Force sources and just many others that there is no way, no way that this was an accident and that somebody pushed the wrong button because there’s five fail-safes.

Then my phone rings from not one, but two, one former State Department source, another CIA, then my phone rings from someone who associated with Delta Force, then I get some more phone calls, and they are like, “Why aren’t you covering this? This is huge. This is gigantic, this is meant to embarrass Trump, this is meant to destabilize things,” and it’s meant to distract from the fact that there were Uranium One indictments that turns out came out yesterday that nobody noticed.

You seem to be saddened that you're not popular here. (Well, neither am I.)