Thread by @AlexandraErin

So much this.

I see people scrutinizing the ellipses again, as though Trump's transcriptionist who typed up the hand-doctored version of the call would have felt compelled to put a mark in to say "we took something out here".

It's for readability.

https://twitter.com/dynamicsymmetry/status/1179389249713577984

The ellipses in the Trump "transcript" aren't his equivalent of 18 1/2 minutes of erased Watergate tape, they're there because he was rambling.

"Are you so naive as to believe they left everything in?"

Are you so naive as to believe they'd *mark* what they took out?

Trump had been working Zelensky for weeks, months. In public. In private. Thinking he would need to be more explicit than he was in the transcript in order to get his point across is... well, it's like thinking that there's going to be a tape of Putin giving Trump orders.

People keep saying "Wait for the smoking gun, where's the smoking gun, we'll nail him when we get the smoking gun." but don't know what a smoking gun looks like. Or how shady deals get done.

Calling Zelensky reasonable... surely a reasonable man can figure it out for himself?

Also, the Biden thing isn't a distraction from Trump's true purpose. Keeping power over here is Trump's purpose; expanding his power over there is Putin's. Trump's getting what he wants and Putin's getting what he wants. That's the essence of their "deal": mutual self-interest.

Trump and Putin had Zelensky, an entertainer in over his head, in a pincer maneuver. He's not going to be above putting the screws to him for whatever oddball idea popped into his head about a mythical missing server or trumped-up conspiracy theories about an opponent.

This isn't Encyclopedia Brown and the Case of International Diplomacy. Trump is on transcript, using gangster tactics to extort concessions for himself and his patron from a nation that is officially our ally. That's it. That's the smoking gun.

So why is a 30 minute transcript so short, if they're not hiding the part where he says, "You're going to give up Crimea, see? And then you're going to have a little talk with my boys about Hunter Bide nor you'll be sleeping with the fishes, see?"

Gee, let me think.

I will not be at all shocked if there's more damaging and even illegal things referenced in the full transcript, with Trump feeling invincible and in full-on ramble mode. But I also won't be shocked if it's mostly just been trimmed down to be less redundant and nonsensical.

Considering there's already stuff in the cleaned-up transcript that has people up to and including professional news analysts going, "...wait. Huh. What's he talking about here?"

You have to be versed in right-wing conspiracy theories and Trump's own peculiar logic to follow it.

So there's definitely stuff in the full call that would serve no purpose but to make him look bad for being nonsense that can't be connected to anything.

Remember that piece the other week about how US journalists routinely clean up Trump's statements in order to report on them?

At a guess, what they trimmed is the stuff that has the least obvious connection to anything related to the complaint. I imagine it all makes him look/sound foolish, but making it appear like he stayed mostly on topic is an improvement?

Also, without an automated log saying that he was on the phone for 30 minutes, I'm not sure why we're taking that number as gospel? If I was in charge of charting how President Executive Time spends his day, I'd round all actual work up to the next half hour increment, too.

Basically, the conspiracy theorizing around what was cut out from the transcript is based on the assumption that Team Trump is exceedingly honest in ways that leave clues for the Hardy Boys to follow.

As I noted in my newsletter yesterday, granting that there is a kernel of truth behind a Trump misdirection is a classic mistake, one that helped put him into power first as a "tycoon" and now as a "politician".

alexandraerin.substack.com/p/another-of-t…

In conclusion: I'm not saying to ignore anything else that actually comes out, but we should be acknowledging that the contents of the transcript are enough. The pieces are there, in plain sight. Trump's conduct is in plain sight. The crimes are in plain sight.