The art of saying sorry when you’re not sorry
As a young man on the make in Manhattan, as a political candidate and as President, Donald Trump has relied for half a century on a basic rule of behaviour: To win, one must never apologise.
But sometimes life offers no choice but to back down, and when that happens to Trump, he has crafted a method of apology that is equal parts retreat and doubling down.
Yesterday, Trump felt compelled to pull back on his Helsinki statement that embraced Russian President Vladimir Putin’s version of the 2016 campaign interference story over the facts presented by US intelligence services.
Trump saw that he had to respond to a torrent of criticism from his political base as well as from the opposition. But the way the President delivered his statement of retreat was classic Trump, a dual message — a ritual statement of confidence in US intelligence officials for those who insist that the President respect the nation’s systems and mores, but also a series of winks and nods to those who like Trump expressly because he’s eager to smash china and topple tradition.
As he began to read his statement reversing what he’d said in Helsinki, Trump, who started his appearance with less formal comments about his European trip, made a show of demonstrating to the TV audience that he was now reading from a script.
Although he’d been speaking for several minutes, he abruptly changed to a more formal tone of voice, and said, “So I’ll begin by stating that I have full faith and support for America’s great intelligence agencies.” He read from the paper: “Let me be totally clear in saying that, and I’ve said this many times, I accept our intelligence community’s conclusion that Russia’s meddling in the 2016 election took place.”
Then he looked up. Change of tone, to the casual Trump, the voice his followers know conveys his true feelings. And he interjected: “Could be other people also. A lot of people out there.”
And he was off, riffing as he had in Helsinki, once more re-litigating the 2016 election, asserting that, “There was no collusion at all, and people have seen that and they’ve seen it strongly.”
He would come back to his script, claiming that his error in Helsinki had been the misstating of a single word — “would” instead of “wouldn’t”. “So you can put that in,” the President said, “and I think that probably clarifies things pretty good by itself.”
He went on, but the signals had been sent, a quick wave of a white flag for those who insist on such things, and a zesty little aside, a wink and a nod, to those who needed assurance that their renegade President would never cave to the swampdwellers, never back away from his commitment to blow up the old, failed ways of Washington.
Although he often demands apologies, Trump has always been frank about his belief that they are a sign of weakness.
He didn’t apologise for calling Haiti and African countries “shitholes”. He didn’t apologise for slamming Republican Senator John McCain during the 2016 campaign as a “loser” who was no war hero “because he was captured.” Trump held a news conference to react to the firestorm over his insult. But rather than expressing remorse, he instead hit McCain again, accusing the senator of not doing enough to help his fellow veterans.
“I think apologising’s a great thing,” he said on NBC’s in 2015, “but you have to be wrong”. “I will absolutely apologise, sometime in the hopefully distant future, if I’m ever wrong,” he said.
Once he entered politics, apologies took on an added charge, and a highly negative one because Trump believed that Barack Obama had weakened the country’s reputation by apologising too much for US policies.
In politics or in business, Trump believes, as he wrote in several of his bestselling books, that repetition of a false or exaggerated statement is a powerful tool — hardly an occasion for apology.