What if Dusko Markovic had shoved Donald Trump back and Trump had yelled "You just body-slammed me" and we had the whole thing not on video, but only audio?

Here's Trump getting physical with the Prime Minister of Montenegro.

[VIDEO NO LONGER AVAILABLE]

I don't know if you've ever been videotaped moving through a packed, stopped crowd, with the camera zoomed in on you and the video rendered in slow-mo at the point at which you made the most physical contact and the most forward progress. But that happened to Trump. And even in that clipped-down snippet, we see Dusko Markovic smile, which reassures fair-minded people that it wasn't a big deal, but even so, it gave the anti-Trump folks something to cry "thug" about and psychoanalyze — "You tiny, tiny, tiny little man," tweeted J.K. Rowling — and mock. Everything that can be used will be used.

But what if the camera weren't there? I assume Trump would have behaved differently, perhaps he'd have been more brusque and brutal, perhaps less. He might have barged through more carelessly if he knew there were no visual record. But he might have been more patient and meek, because he wouldn't have had to worry about looking comically ineffectual. And the situation he faced might have been different if the people in front of him had had no concern that they might look disrespected and unimportant.

It's even possible that the blockage Trump faced was a deliberate closing of ranks by the European leaders assigned to the back row, so the cameras would capture thousands of images of poor Trump, stuck behind the feisty Europeans, unable to make his way forward. Imagine the headlines the newspapers could plop on top of the funniest, most symbolic-seeming picture of trapped Trump.

But what if the cameras weren't there and instead we had audio? Men moving for position within a crowd, each with his own agenda, each wanting power and high respect. They're jostling around and past each other. And let's imagine that Dusko Markovic, without the camera, reacted to Trump by pushing back, just a little bit harder. Picture it: Trump barged past, a little physical, and then Markovic took a you-push-me-I-push-you attitude and deliberately knocked Trump back. Remember, there's no video. But there's audio, and Trump yells "You just body-slammed me."

You see my point. All we'd have would be Trump's "You just body-slammed me." We wouldn't know that Trump did some modest manhandling that Markovic experienced as degrading and that Markovic was doing the old manly tit-for-tat.

You can do things with audio. I have no idea what really happened in the audio involving Greg Gianforte that was all over the news yesterday, but Gianforte has won the special election in Montana — with something like a 7 point margin of victory — and he's made a careful apology: "I should not have responded the way I did, for that I'm sorry. I should not have treated that reporter that way, and for that I'm sorry, Mr. Ben Jacobs."

I say "careful," because he doesn't say what, exactly, "the way I did" was or why — there are many reasons — he "should not have responded" like that. Of course, he's sorry. He wisely refrains from adding nonapology baggage after "I'm sorry." (People often add words like "if anyone was offended," but they never add "that I got into so much trouble.")

Speaking of "careful," going forward, politicians need to be careful. I'm worried about things that can be done with audio. The "body-slamming" vocalization may have been entirely justified by whatever happened out there in Montana, but it also points the way to endless dirty tricks. You can say anything, and you can say it with feeling: Hit hit me! He grabbed me! How dare you! You choked me!

You can lie with video too. Dusko Markovic could have hammily stumbled off to the side and fallen on the floor. But lying with speech is the normal, daily behavior of the human being. It comes so naturally and easily to us. Fortunately, sorting through lies and deceit is also something we do every day. It's hard to keep up. But we still care about trying.