Wrote Donald Trump, in the letter he left in the Oval Office for Joe Biden, quoted in "'I Know How Much You Love the American People,' Trump Told Biden in 2021 Letter/The letter, which former President Joseph R. Biden Jr. details in a new book, is remarkable for a warm tone starkly at odds with his predecessor’s public comments" (NYT).
It's a warm letter. I wonder who drafted it. It doesn't sound like Trump, and I'm not saying that because I don't think Trump can be warm. And some of it does sound a lot like Trump. He's interested in architecture, interior design, and the profundities of history. I'm saying it doesn't sound like Trump because he used the phrase "inflection point."
In August 2020, I blogged about "inflection point" in a post that begins with a quote from Kamala Harris's convention speech: "We’re at an inflection point. The constant chaos leaves us adrift. The incompetence makes us feel afraid. The callousness makes us feel alone. It’s a lot." I said:
I'd like to see person-in-the-street interviews testing whether people even understand what it means to say we're at an "inflection point."At the time, Nate Silver preened: "Harris saying 'inflection point' seems like kind of a call-out to FiveThirtyEight readers, to be honest." He thought it was his phrase.
I don't think I've ever used the phrase "inflection point" on this blog. I mean aside that time I quoted somebody saying "We’re at this inflection point where we want people to know where their quinoa is coming from." And one other time in a quote (about YouTube having an "inflection point" at which it detects fake clicks). I use the word "inflection" only to refer to the way people speak, not to refer to a place — something like a crossroads or a fork in the road....
And Biden used it in his 2020 convention speech: "As many have said America is at an inflection point...." Biden kept using it: In his 2023 State of the Union: "My fellow Americans, we meet tonight at an inflection point...." In his 2024 address to the U.N.: "I truly believe we’re in another inflection point of world history. For the choices we make today will determine our future for decades to come." And about a random week in 2022: "Decades from now, people are going to look back at this week — with all we passed, and all we moved on — [and say] that we met the moment at this inflection point in history."
Maybe Biden kept using it because Trump's use of it in that letter had made a big impression, but I think it's a Democratic speechwriter's phrase. I like to think Trump wrote the letter all by himself, but I just don't think he'd write "inflection point." But then, I don't think his speechwriters would write "inflection point." Go ahead, see if you can find "inflection point" in all the voluminous verbiage that is Trump's.
Maybe the best explanation of "inflection point" in that Trump letter is it's some sort of Trumpian joke. A subtle dig, using your stock phrase? Whether it's a good joke or not — whether Biden would feel needled or not — doesn't matter.
Now, you could wonder whether that text Biden published is the true text of what Trump wrote in his letter. Maybe Biden or whoever wrote Biden's book tweaked the text, and I've used their shibboleth to uncover their dishonesty. No, I don't think the letter is fake. It puts Trump in a warm light. What's the motivation for that?
पोस्ट्स
२४ टिप्पण्या:
I asked Grok, "Could it be a humorous tweaking of Biden, to use that phrase that Biden had used in his convention speech?"
Grok: "Yes, it’s a plausible reading, though not one the current reporting emphasizes...."
Me: "I'm probably the only one focusing on it. https://althouse.blogspot.com/2026/11/dear-joe-coming-to-work-every-day-in.html I have a long history of watching that phrase, which I've disliked for many years"
Grok: "You're not the only one. Ann Althouse posted about it today, zeroing in on the exact same detail...."
It's too late to save "parameter" and probably "inflection point" as well, but an inflection point is where a curve changes from curving upwards to curving downwards or vice versa.
It's the point in a shear flow velocity profile where turbulence sets in.
I thought Trump didn't drink, but maybe just this one time.
Now do "Dear Joe's" letter to Trump on January 20, 2025. I promise you that it was nothing like that. I strongly doubt that there even was one.
Donald Trump isn’t a subordinate clause kind of guy.
“Grok: "You're not the only one. Ann Althouse posted about it today, zeroing in on the exact same detail...."”
Haha!
Who is Ray Epps?
Grok: "You're not the only one. Ann Althouse posted about it today, zeroing in on the exact same detail...." That's some funny stuff, there. A reminder that AI isn't really thinking; just writing the words that it thinks would be written by someone who was thinking.
“…an inflection point is where a curve changes from curving upwards to curving downwards or vice versa.“
I recall getting a sketch of a land development where all the roads looked like a curve. That’s exactly how I plot it on the CAD. All roads were a compound curve. Not a straight line anywhere. I don’t know if it got built. The company that bought LMS Engineers, my employer, took over the project. I got laid off about a year later.
Trump is a nice person who fights back.
The retards that support Democrats just don’t understand what the word nice means. They are rabid animals who practice insect politics.
Trump being decent and kind just makes them angry because they don’t understand it.
Donald Trump is a patriot - that comes through in almost everything he does and says. And yes his letter is warm, but its almost patriotic, asking Joe Biden to do what's best for the country and look at things from a broad patriotic perspective.
As one President to another.
Of course, I wonder what Trump would say now about Joe Biden in private. After Biden refused to do invoke executive privilage and allowed Congress to pour over all his documents. And then told his AG to put Trump in jail over bogus "classified documents" and "Insurrection" on Jan 6th.
That's why Biden pardoned his whole family and cabinet along with everyone involved in the J6 committee. He was afraid Trump would learn how the law was broken and go after them for their crimes.
Trump has speech writers. I'm sure he told them, "Write me a letter that says blahdeblah and then Trump made edits and signed the final draft". IOW, he probably acted like every executive I've known. He knew Biden would pass it around, and probably publish it one day.
"Inflection point" is the sort of clunky pompous phrase that people today would like. Its like "American Exceptionalism" instead of "patriotism". Or the habit of constantly turning nouns into verbs and adjectives.
#For the curious. Missing link from my last comment. 👆🏽
20 years is a blink of an eye.
"It doesn't sound like Trump, and I'm not saying that because I don't think Trump can be warm."
There's subtexted sarcasm in several paragraphs. "You now have the opportunity to choose your place in history, and I know you will be true to yourself..." is especially delicious, most especially because it predicts the place he chose, and how.
“Don’t underestimate Joe’s ability to fuck things up." - Obummer
Now try Inflection Point as Fight Metaphor like getting spun around and dizzy disoriented.
Has any President published the letter he received before? It's one thing to comment about it, but the actual text should stay private. Having said that, I'd like to see BO's in 2017. Bet he would not want it published.
"Inflection point" was one of Biden's favorite phrases. He used it over and over again. It doesn't seem very Trumpian. It was out of his wheelhouse, as they say. It would be a remarkable irony if Biden actually learned the phrase from Trump. Not so remarkable if Trump learned it from Biden.
Every corner of the Oval Office?!?
In 2010, when Gordon Brown lost to David Cameron, Brown's Treasury secretary left a note for Cameron's saying "there is no money left." Much hay was made with this. CC, JSM
Zero chance he wrote this or even knew about it.
RSM got it.
"There's subtexted sarcasm in several paragraphs. "You now have the opportunity to choose your place in history, and I know you will be true to yourself..." is especially delicious, most especially because it predicts the place he chose, and how.
Note also that the guy who didn't get it, and still doesn't get it, was Biden, who put it in his book.
An inflection point is when a curve changes from concave up to concave down (and visa versa) , not when the slope changes from upwards to downwards. It can be determined at points where the second derivative equals zero or is undefined. Example: it can be used to show when an infectious disease is still growing but has been brought under control.
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