Wednesday, February 03, 2021

Mitch McConnell obfuscating President Trump's agency in the Senate on 9 November 2020

On 9 November 2020, Senator Mitch McConnell argued in the Senate that "President Trump is 100 percent within his rights to look into allegations of irregularities and weigh his legal options." The activities McConnell attributed to the President were "looking into" and "weighing" matters, but the noun McConnell used contains another action: the "alleging" of those "allegations". This noun thus obscures the source of those "allegations" – Trump himself, who'd been announcing them for weeks and months before the election. That is, McConnell's focus on what Trump had the right to do after the election as a tactical response to apparently agentless "allegations" effaced his long-term, strategic preparation of those very "allegations." (Andrew Shields, #111words, 3 February 2021)

 


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