This was the week of rouses and houses. Trump called a bipartisan meeting from Congress at the White House and, to the surprise of many, much of the meeting showed on video. Everyone seemed to get along. Viewers could see real, actual video of leaders in real, normal conversation. It was somewhat unusual and not the least bit jarring.
Then began the rouse and purported fake news. The Wall Street Journal is accused of reporting that Trump claims a good relationship with Kim Jong Un rather than that he would have a good relationship with Kim Jong Un. This was one of the more obvious misreports. Another included Trump speaking vulgarly about unfortunate nations in his bipartisan meeting at the White House.
While there is no recording of his comments to members of Congress, there is a recording of what Trump said to the Wall Street Journal, which so far has refused to change the disputed quote.
Whether Trump actually spoke the dirty word as reported is left up to a whosaidhesaidit argument on Capital Hill. The big change: Republicans actually spoke in Trump’s defense, that he didn’t use such words. That should be notoriety enough, when someone receives support from his own enemies.
Then, there was the rouse in Hawaii with a false invasion alarm. Don’t worry, Hawaii will think through what any Product Manager worth half of his salt would have drawn-up for a product roadmap well in advance. They will make it harder to press the “panic” button and equip their system with a “cancel” button to turn off the panic. Of course, it was all an accident and a big misunderstanding, nothing anyone needs to lose a job over.
In fact, the slew of rouses that trailed after the video of the president getting along with leaders in Washington was all a complete and coincidental “aligning of the planets”, such a celestial event that does happen in nature, such as blue moons and Halley’s Comet, except that the unusual string of rouses itself doesn’t seem to be worth covering in the press—at least not elsewhere.