Monday, October 15, 2018
…and Warren, a lawyer, either knows he didn’t and is saying so anyway, or is saying so without checking what he actually said, which, for a lawyer allegedly trying to enforce a contract, is both incompetent and dishonest.
And once again, the complicit mainstream media is deceiving the public to assist a Democrat’s misrepresentation. Nice.
Nah, there’s no mainstream media bias.
In a series of tweets on Monday, Warren called on Trump to pay the $1 million to charity. Trump replied to a reporter, “I didn’t say that; you better read that again.”
Says the Hill, in an article by Jordan Fabian, “Trump denies offering $1 million for Warren DNA test, even though he did.” In fact, he didn’t. This Time, Trump is telling the truth. The Hill, using the news media’s favorite trick of late, pulls only part of the relevant quote: “I will give you a million dollars, to your favorite charity, paid for by Trump, if you take the test and it shows you’re an Indian,I have a feeling she will say ‘no.’ ”
That wasn’t the whole statement. Bless law professor Ann Althouse: I was going to go through the analysis, and I really don’t have time. She’s retired now, has the time, and is a better contact lawyer than I’ll ever be. Here was her absolutely correct explanation:
[H]ere’s the text, because Trump did say “you better read that again.” And reading is great for the kind of textualism that any lawsuit to enforce a contract would have to focus on:
But let’s say I’m debating Pocahontas. I promise you I’ll do this: I will take, you know those little kits they sell on television… learn your heritage!… And in the middle of the debate, when she proclaims that she is of Indian heritage because her mother said she has high cheek bones. That;s her only evidence, her mother said we have high cheek bones.
All right, the conditions for accepting the offer by taking the test have not yet arisen. There has been no debate and certainly no proclaiming of Indian heritage in the middle of a debate. I don’t think Elizabeth Warren would ever make the relevant proclamation. But she certainly hasn’t done it yet.
We will take that little kit — but we have to do it gently. Because we’re in the #MeToo generation, we have to be very gentle. And we will very gently take that kit, and we will slowly toss it, hoping it doesn’t hit her and injure her arm, even though it only weighs 2 ounces, and we will say: I will give you a million dollars to your favorite charity, paid for by Trump, if you take the test and it shows you’re an Indian.
So the test to be taken is the one that Trump would toss to Warren in the middle of a debate. Obviously, that hasn’t happened yet, and who thinks it ever would happen? Trump isn’t going to throw something at Warren during a debate, even gently. It’s a comical scenario, and we don’t even need to argue with people who might say he really meant it, because it’s plainly true that Trump has not yet tossed a DNA test kit at Warren during a presidential debate. She has not taken that test, and that’s the only test he spoke of, and it’s all purely hypothetical. There’s no offer to accept, and what Warren did wasn’t what Trump was talking about.
Even the most Trump-deranged lawyer, and I know lots, unless all of their legal education has run out their ears, will have to admit that Trump owes Warren nothing, because that was not a unilateral contract offer or an enforceable promise by any possible interpretation, where an open ended set of conditions with a guaranteed pay-0ff were met under the conditions given. When she claims otherwise, Warren is trying to deceive the public about facts and law. The Hill supporting her is an example of unethical journalism.
But it’s Trump, so there’s no need to be fair or honest, even for a lawyer, right?