Its like Trump’s claims that his inauguration audience was a real record-breaker; the fact he was mistaken about it is also “conceivably, an innocent mistake”. The fact he raised such a stink about it, and continued to do so when presented with contradictory evidence tells a lot about how he thinks, and how he wants us to think.

The man is such a congenital, pathological liar that he does it when it is easily checked, and when he has no reason to do so, nothing to gain by doing it, and everything to lose by getting called on it.

Not to mention it gives his followers a lot of extra work cleaning up after him….and his enemies plenty of documented ammunition to use against him.

The White House’s official transcript of the news conference omits the first part of a reporter’s question to Putin: “President Putin, did you want President Trump to win the election?” Instead, the official transcript only includes the second part of the question: “And did you direct any of your officials to help him do that?”
The omission appears to be due to an issue with an overlap between simultaneous translation of Putin’s remarks and the first part of the reporter’s question to Putin in the audio feed the stenographers rely on. Private transcription services also made the same error.
White House transcripts, which are considered the official record of the President’s comments, are compiled by White House stenographers who are career officials, not political appointees.

But while the White House has previously corrected errors in the transcripts that historians and reporters rely on, it has yet to do so this time even though officials are aware of the omission.
“This was by no means malicious,” a White House official said of the omission, explaining that the audio mixer at the site did not bring up the audio levels of the reporter’s microphone up in time to catch the beginning of the question because the translator was still speaking.
The audio mixing issue also led to the first part of the question being omitted in the White House’s video feed of the event.
The omission muddles the meaning of Putin’s response to the question, in which he confirmed for the first time that he wanted Trump to win the 2016 presidential election.
“Yes, I did. Yes, I did,” Putin said. “Because he talked about bringing the US-Russia relationship back to normal.”
The White House has not responded to requests for comment about why the transcript has not been corrected.

They don’t believe him, they know WE don’t believe him, but they desperately want us to believe that they believe him…

Because that way they can keep pretending they are decent people…

Its all about appearances.

Trump’s own party may resolve to remove him, using unconstitutional or even violent means, because they realize his incompetence will lead us into disaster, and because their own agenda will be exposed and discredited, or even overthrown, by his ineptness. If this happens, you know they’re going to have to blame his removal on someone else–like us. And the Deplorables will demand revenge. Bloody revenge.

All it will take is someone in Trump’s inner circle to believe he’s gone too far, or perhaps someone who is convinced he hasn’t gone far enough, to mount a palace uprising. And it will be choreographed so the Deplorables will demand revenge. Bloody revenge.

In some cases, the “correction” is so obviously bogus and outrageous only the True Believers can accept it without major eyerolls; like the substitution of one word in the POTUS Helsinki announcement that completely reversed the meaning of the statement. No one believed it, but Trump’s apologists seized on it because it gave them an out.

This gets FAR uglier before it’s over and we can start with the work of picking up the pieces- if there are any pieces left…

The White House has suspended the practice of publishing public summaries of President Donald Trump’s phone calls with world leaders, two sources with knowledge of the situation tell CNN, bringing an end to a common exercise from Republican and Democratic administrations.

It’s unclear if the suspension is temporary or permanent. A White House spokesman declined to comment.
Official descriptions of the President’s calls with foreign leaders — termed “readouts” in Washington parlance — offer administrations the chance to characterize in their own terms the diplomacy conducted at the highest levels between countries. While news is rarely contained in the rote, often dry descriptions, they do offer the only official account that a phone call took place. Readouts are still released internally

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We have countless versions we can examine, to compare and contrast and study. But decades from now, when history is jelling into the “final” version, it will be the edited, approved transcripts which will survive, not the earlier drafts.

Future historians will lose the context, they will only have the “approved” version. And they won’t have any reason to question it like we do. Future scholars may not be as familiar with the controversy and uncertainty that exists today, so they won’t be as motivated to reconstruct the moment like we can. The canonical text will be established.

Historians like to think we need context and perspective to properly evaluate historical data, that historical truth eventually emerges from past data as we contrast and compare it with the events leading up to it, and the research and analysis subsequent to it.

I don’t believe that. The longer we wait, the weaker the signal gets. Bits get dropped from the data stream. Some accidentally, some deliberately. I’m old enough now to realize some events I actually participated in aren’t logged in the official record the way I remember them going down…

You’re absolutely right, its what fascists do.