Yes. I don't think it was a lie since it would needlessly create problems, but it was either the initial idea that was hastily revised after seeing the market reaction, or rank carelessness.
It's fun to joke about a politician's gaffes, and simple verbal slips are understandable - I noticed several in the speech but they were not substantive or significant. However, I think when drafting and reading a preapred statement on a topic of grave importance politicians have an obligation to say what they actually mean.
> There will be exemptions for Americans who have undergone appropriate screenings, and these prohibitions will not only apply to the tremendous amount of trade and cargo, but various other things as we get approval. Anything coming from Europe to the United States is what we are discussing. These restrictions will also not apply to the United Kingdom.
It reads a whole lot cleaner, i.e. like you would expect from a speech, if the statement about cargo was intended to say it was not prohibited.
My best guess is honestly that it was meant to be "these prohibitions will not apply to the" instead of "these prohibitions will not only apply to the". Inserting an extra "only" is a pretty easy mistake to make when reading text out loud.
[EDIT] Since the downvotes have started pouring in, I have to ask. Do you really attribute to this error to malice rather than stupidity? Given that the administration immediately (within minutes? edit: [0]yes, within minutes) made a correction I find it difficult to believe it was deliberate misinformation.
I mean, miscommunication happens. Trump didn't invent the plan, he was advised by others and gave the go-ahead. Then, his advisors drafted all of the details of the plan (probably in very short order). And of course, he didn't write the speech, someone prepared it for him. Afterward, the speech changed hands numerous times until some staff member loaded it into the prompter.
Someone definitely messed up, but it's hard for me to see how anyone could blame the speaker for this one. Assuming there's no partisanship, of course.
Not malice.. I attribute it to DOW futures dropping 400 points within minutes of him saying that. So they backtracked as quickly as possible.
But I also don't believe this speech would have happened tonight if it had been a up day on the stock market. I think that is the only lens they are looking at this through.
You can hire a whole team of perfectly competent people and all it takes is one slip-up to ship the wrong version of a file. I have no love for the administration, but I find it frustrating that people are so eager to attribute every single error, regardless of impact, to one name.
If you go back one administration and search 'Obama clarifies' on google, you find the same thing. Turns out that press machines involving dozens of people are prone to human error.
In a hypothetical world where our competent president and his competent staff made an occasional error, it would be reasonable to give the benefit of the doubt.
This is one of three or four errors just in this address alone. An address that may literally be the most important of his presidency. It wasn't just some George W. tripping over his words, he said literally the exact opposite of what the policy actually was and just kept rolling.
This is too important to be grading on a curve.
edit: To be clear I'm not suggesting he misread the teleprompter intentionally. I am saying that he and his administration have a level of incompetence and neglect that would result in jail time in many private industries.
I respect your position and the desire for professionalism. I differ in regard to the expectations of people, however. Even under the best of circumstances with the benefit of a lot of time (we don't have a clue about the intelligence that triggered this, so we don't know if they put this together in a day or a week) I still expect errors. Perhaps I'm cynical, but I just assume human beings will break things and screw up whenever they are given the opportunity. In the case of the white house press corps, there's a lot of opportunity for that.
That's why Obama had to issue immediate corrections regarding troop deployments, economy, and policies. There's too many moving parts.
I feel that this administration is actively hostile to the well-being of the United States, but I've been telling people since day 1 that it's counter productive to make fun of Trump and nit pick at every error regardless of how tiny or inconsequential. At the very best it diverts attention from the actual problems with this administration and at worst deepens into the political chasm we seem to have in this country.
