Trump doesn't seem to understand what Rep Adam Schiff was saying in his opening statement on the whistleblower complaint on Friday.
The Trump fans of the right don't seem any brighter, since they're all repeating the same stupid complaint as their Dear Leader.
What Adam Schiff was using was a paraphrase:
A paraphrase...is a restatement of the meaning of a text or passage using other words....
A paraphrase typically explains or clarifies the text that is being paraphrased.... A paraphrase is usually introduced with...a declaratory expression to signal the transition to the paraphrase. For example, in "The signal was red, that is, the train was not allowed to proceed," the that is signals the paraphrase that follows.
A paraphrase does not need to accompany a direct quotation, the paraphrase typically serves to put the source's statement into perspective or to clarify the context in which it appeared.
Here's what Adam Schiff actually said:
(starting at about 2:15):
Ukraine was invaded by its neighbor, by our common adversary, by Vladimir Putin’s Russia. It remains occupied by Russian irregular forces in a long, simmering war. Ukraine desperately needs our help, and for years we have given it and on a bipartisan basis. That is until two months ago when it was held up inexplicably by President Trump. It is in this context, after a brief congratulatory call from President Trump to President Zelensky on April 21st and after the President’s personal emissary Rudy Giuliani made it abundantly clear to Ukrainian officials over several months that the President wanted dirt on his political opponent, it is in this context that the new president of Ukraine would speak to Donald Trump over the phone on July 25th. President Zelensky, eager to establish himself at home as a friend of the president of the most powerful nation on earth, had at least two objectives, get a meeting with the President and get more military help.
And so what happened on that call? Zelensky begins by ingratiating himself and he tries to enlist the support of the President. He expresses his interest in meeting with the President and says his country wants to acquire more weapons from us to defend itself. And what is the President’s response? Well, it reads like a classic organized crime shakedown. Shorn of its rambling character and in not so many words, this is the essence of what the President communicates.
We’ve been very good to your country. Very good. No other country has done as much as we have. But you know what? I don’t see much reciprocity here. I hear what you want. I have a favor I want from you, though. And I’m going to say this only seven times, so you better listen good. I want you to make up dirt on my political opponent. Understand? Lots of it on this and on that. I’m going to put you in touch with people, and not just any people. I’m going to put you in touch with the attorney general of the United States, my attorney general Bill Barr. He’s got the whole weight of the American law enforcement behind him. And I’m going to put you in touch with Rudy. You’re going to love him. Trust me. You know what I’m asking? And so I’m only going to say this a few more times in a few more ways. And by the way, don’t call me again. I’ll call you when you’ve done what I asked.
This is in sum and character what the President was trying to communicate with the president of Ukraine. It would be funny if it wasn’t such a graphic betrayal of the President’s oath of office, but as it does represent a real betrayal, there’s nothing the President says here that is in America’s interest after all.
(I've italicized the paraphrase.)
Schiff says, before he goes into his paraphrase, this is the essence of what the President communicates; after the paraphrase he says this is in sum and character what the President was trying to communicate.
He clearly set off his paraphrase of Trump's words by noting where the paraphrase started and where it ended.
It couldn’t be clearer that he wasn’t trying to pass off those words as Trump’s actual utterances — he was putting them into the legal and political context that any sentient human being of any intelligence can understand as the essence of what Trump was trying do in his call.
I suspect that what really got Trump's goat was how well Schiff put his paraphrase into Trump's own vernacular of childish thuggery, so that you can hear it just as Trump would have performed it on the phone with Zelensky.
Schiff has for sure gotten under the orange skin, and Trumpelstiltskin is still stomping around in a rage, though he hasn't yet stomped all the way through the floor, never to be heard from again.
Although that's coming...