Everyone is talking or writing about the latest bizarre Trump-Guiliani wordplay, including Mark Sumner here on Daily Kos (below):
Donald Trump’s morning tweets have made a not-so subtle shift away from the “No Collusion!” he’s been tossing onto messages for over a year. In this latest round, Trump has joined the chorus for that other favorite phrase of the alt-Reich, “Collusion is not a crime.”
Since it became clear that Michael Cohen was willing to testify that Trump had advance knowledge of the meeting between his top campaign staff and Russian operatives, the strategy of Trump’s legal defense has been shifting. Not only did Rudy Giuliani appear on television to provide names, dates, and details of a pre-meeting meeting before he returned to the air to say that the meeting he described “never happened,” he also spread the gospel of “Collusion is not a crime.”
This is the lead story on HUFFPOST today, where they note that another Trump attorney Jay Sekulow, along with Chris Cristie, and Alan Dershowitz are also weighing in with the it's not a crime mantra.
Of course, when collusion is part of the obstruction of justice this is a crime, see below:
“Highly confidential White House records and testimony by some of President Trump’s own top aides” — offers “some of the strongest evidence to date implicating the president of the United States in an obstruction of justice.” Read “Flynn, Comey, and Mueller: What Trump Knew and When He Knew It ” by Murray Waas in NY Review of Books.
And then there’s this from Heather Digby Parton: Panic on Team Trump: Is Robert Mueller closing in on criminal conspiracy charges? As Rudy Giuliani spins a story no one can follow and his boss melts down on Twitter, intriguing hints emerge
Below: On Rachell Maddow last night Daniel Goldman, former assistant U.S. attorney, presents an interesting theory on why the Trump team has suddenly switched to the "collusion is not a crime" talking point.
Someone on MSNBC had the best quip I’ve heard yet: death is not a crime, but murder is.
Guiliani said he scoured the legal lit and concluded collusion wasn’t a crime, which begged the question as to why a former prosecutor had to go to the legal library to discover something as basic as this.
The dictionary definition is: secret or illegal cooperation or conspiracy, especially in order to cheat or deceive others: for example, the armed forces were working in collusion with drug traffickers | collusion between media owners and political leaders. • Law: illegal cooperation or conspiracy, especially between ostensible opponents in a lawsuit.
Trump used “no collusion” in so many Tweets that when MSNBC puts them all on the screen at the same time there are so many you need a giant magnifying glass to read them.
Here’s a Google images search:
For months Trump implied that if he had colluded it would be a bad thing.
The revised message is a work in progress as Guiliani and other sycophants try to determine which Orwellian word-twisting will be the most persuasive.
Perhaps Kossacks can help them.
Here’s my contest, an exercise in creative wordsmithery. The winners as determined by the accolades and recommends given by those who comment will be bragging rights.
Use the word collusion or collude in a sentence where it's a good thing.