Posted on 02/07/2018 3:57:18 AM PST by MarvinStinson
An incorrect White House pool report prompted outlets to falsely report that Chief of Staff John Kelly told reporters that President Donald Trump had not read a 10-page memo because it was "too lengthy."
According to a Tuesday pool report from the Dallas Morning News‘
Todd Gillman,
"Kelly talked briefly to a few poolers and said Trump hasn't yet read the Democrats' memo but will be briefed on it later today. ‘No no. It is quite lengthy,'"
The quote went viral when repeated by reporters on social media, earning write-ups in liberal outlets like ThinkProgress. Many critics zeroed in on the fact that the "lengthy" report was only 10 pages.
Manu Raju
John Kelly on whether Trump has read the Schiff memo. “No, no. It is quite lengthy.” We are told it’s 10 pages.
2:07 PM - Feb 6, 2018
Peter Baker
Kelly tells reporters that Trump hasn't read the Democratic memo yet but will be briefed on it later today: "No no. It is quite lengthy."
2:38 PM - Feb 6, 2018
JUST IN: Chief of Staff John Kelly says President Trump has not yet read the Democrats' memo - "No, no. It is quite lengthy," Kelly said - but will be briefed on it later today, per pool.
2:06 PM - Feb 6, 2018
The Hill
Kelly says Trump hasn't read the 10-page Dem memo yet: "It is quite lengthy" http://hill.cm/wZRXbH4
2:49 PM - Feb 6, 2018
Judd Legum
White House says 10-page memo is ‘too lengthy’ for Trump to read https://goo.gl/YdUM5B
3:09 PM - Feb 6, 2018
The quote from the pool report was also read aloud by anchors on both MSNBC and CNN. "The memo from the Democrats is ten pages long," noted MSNBC's Kay Tur.
But over an hour later, Gillman sent out another pool report indicating that he had misquoted Kelly. In his actual remarks, Kelly didn't cite the length of the memo as a reason Trump hadn't read it, but did cite the fact that he had only just gotten it.
"Has the president read the Democratic memo?" asked a reporter.
"He has it. It's pretty lengthy," Kelly responded.
It was only when asked if the president had read the whole thing that Kelly responded, "No no, I just gave it to him."
"He'll read it after this?" asked a reporter.
"Oh, of course, yeah. We'll get some people down to brief him on it," Kelly said.
A few of the reporters who spread the initial, flawed quote later issued corrections.
Judd Legum
UPDATE: The White House pool report has been corrected. Kelly suggests that Trump will be briefed because the memo is too long for Trump to read, but does not explicitly say it. https://goo.gl/YdUM5B https://twitter.com/JuddLegum/status/960968698717720576 …
3:50 PM - Feb 6, 2018
White House says 10-page memo is ‘too lengthy’ for Trump to read The president is busy watching Fox News.
thinkprogress.org
Peter Baker
Pool sends corrected version of Kelly on Democratic memo:
Q: Has the president read the Democratic memo?
Kelly: "He has it. It's pretty lengthy."
Q: Has he read the whole thing?
Kelly: "No, no, I just gave it to him."
Q: He'll read it after this?
Kelly: "Oh of course yeah."
3:28 PM - Feb 6, 2018
Ban them from the WH pool for FAKE reporting
That Kelly isn’t too bright either.
Even the correction is false, since by saying Kelly did not “explicitly” say the length is the reason Trump didn’t read it, they imply that one could still reasonable infer this from what Kelly said - which is clearly not the case.
No “reporters” with an IQ of less than 130 allowed in the WH.
I was taught how to write a memo for high company officials. You had better be able to get your point across in a sentence or two so they can decide whether to read the backup and rationale. So, right up front you set aside a sentence or paragraph by white space labeled, “Executive Summary.” You put everything that is important for them to know in that space. Then, you back up the statement with whatever material is important. Material or data required to support findings is included as a separate appendix. Today, it would be hyperlinked.
If he didn’t read it due to its length, perhaps he should become a reporter. Not one mention of what is in it.
“Not one mention of what is in it.”
Good point.
Their idiocy is done to DISTRACT attention from the real story.
Arseholes. Or were they “taken out of context?” Seditious bustards. And I agree wholeheartedly, revoke his credentials.
Pool sends corrected version of Kelly on Democratic memo:
Q: Has the president read the Democratic memo?
Kelly: “He has it. It’s pretty lengthy.”
Q: Has he read the whole thing?
Kelly: “No, no, I just gave it to him.”
Q: He’ll read it after this?
Kelly: “Oh of course yeah.”
Yeah, I ran into that too. The same held true for copying e-mails to my boss in some cases. Write the summary (or brief one’s superior) first... My communication might be “down the list” of priorities — even tho’ it seemed crucial to me, I might not know what other crises were going on!
Much of the time it was Summary > Discussion > References and / or supporting material.
Pretty much eliminates all of them from 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue!
This was an event that caused casualties. The executive summary read something like, “The Air Force approved a second, less expensive relay that had a slower close rate than the one used to test the xxxxx. A race condition resulted causing the unit to catch fire.”
Although this was a high profile case where the Air Force had a young lawyer with the hardware for its entire stay and he never left it alone...the whole thing was reduced to about two pages. There was at lead twenty times that in addendums. I don’t think I ever sent a memo upstream that was longer than two pages with summary. There is no excuse to send the President a 10 page memo.
The Schiff memo is proof of an old saying:
“If you can’t dazzle them with facts, bury them with bullshit”.
That’s right.
Going to be a whole lot of empty seats in the WH press room if they do that... actually, I bet there’d be a lot of empty seats if the threshold was 110.
In the military I spent many years on staff. We wrote what is called a “Talking Paper” for senior leadership. We had to write EVERYTHING in a summary on one page. All supporting documents were on attachments. The front page had to define facts and assumptions and potential courses of action.
That's it. You learned to be succinct and to the point.
Example:
10 pages shows that the author doesn't know how to get the main points across. It takes someone with a high IQ and great understanding to write an effective 1-page memo. Any dimwit government bureaucrat not worth 1/10th his salary can wander on for 10-15 pages.
Trump should ask who wrote him a 10 page memo and give send him to reform school or fire him.
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