WTH?!

NYT's David Brooks Defends Trump

But Althouse Accuses Brooks of Weasel Words

I was the op-ed editor at The Wall Street Journal at the peak of the Whitewater scandal. We ran a series of investigative pieces “raising serious questions” (as we say in the scandal business) about the nefarious things the Clintons were thought to have done back in Arkansas. 

Now I confess I couldn’t follow all the actual allegations made in those essays. They were six jungles deep in the weeds. But I do remember the intense atmosphere that the scandal created. A series of bombshell revelations came out in the media, which seemed monumental at the time. A special prosecutor was appointed and indictments were expected. Speculation became the national sport. 

In retrospect Whitewater seems overblown. And yet it has to be confessed that, at least so far, the Whitewater scandal was far more substantive than the Russia-collusion scandal now gripping Washington.

 Ann Althouse noted:

"Political victories are won when you destroy your political opponents by catching them in some wrongdoing. You get seduced by the delightful possibility that your opponent will be eliminated. Politics is simply about moral superiority and personal destruction."

Writes David Brooks in "Let’s Not Get Carried Away," which is about "the Russia-collusion scandal now gripping Washington." Brooks ends by quoting a Trump tweet... 

“They made up a phony collusion with the Russians story, found zero proof, so now they go for obstruction of justice on the phony story.” 

... and adding:

Unless there is some new revelation, that may turn out to be pretty accurate commentary.

Why say "may turn out to be" and not "is"? "Unless there is some new revelation" already locates you in the present, looking at the sum total of the evidence we have now. Trump said it amounted to "zero." Either you agree with that or you don't. I understand weasel words, but why double up on weasel words? What are you afraid of?

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