By Alexandra Petri
The Washington Post
“I never said there was no collusion between the campaign! Or between the people in the campaign. … I said the president of the United States, there is not a single bit of evidence the president of the United States committed the only crime you could commit here: conspired with the Russians to hack the DNC.”
— Rudy Giuliani to CNN anchor Chris Cuomo
“I represent only President Trump, not the Trump campaign. There was no collusion by President Trump in any way, shape or form. Likewise, I have no knowledge of any collusion by any of the thousands of people who worked on the campaign.”
— Rudy Giuliani, in a clarifying statement
When I said there had been no collusion, I obviously did not mean that no one in the campaign was colluding.
When I said there was no collusion by the president, I meant the president AT THE TIME.
When I said nobody was colluding, I meant literally nobody was colluding at the moment you were asking.
When I said there was no collusion, I became temporarily confused and thought you were asking if I wanted hot water, and I didn’t, so I said no.
I thought you were asking if there was NOW collusion. There is NOW collusion, is what I said.
When I said there was no collusion, I meant there definitely wasn’t not not no collusion never!
When I said there was no collusion, I meant we did not collude in our hearts.
When I said there was no collusion, I meant we did not inhale any collusion.
When I said there was no collusion, I was actually thinking of collation, an old-fashioned word for snacks! I hate old-fashioned snacks!
When I said there was no collusion, what I actually said was there was no collision; my phone autocorrected it and then I said it out loud. Yes.
When I said there was no collusion, I meant there was no call, oooo, Sean. I think that’s clear.
I meant there was no Calloo Shun. In the campaign, they frequently said things like “Calloo!” and “Callay!,” especially in response to frabjous news; like, if a foreign power had volunteered to help, that might have occasioned a “Calloo!” Shun the frumious Bandersnatch? Sure. Calloo shun? No!
I meant there is snow! Collusion! I was just saying the word “collusion” randomly, but we can all agree that there is snow. Collusion! See, I just love to shout the word for no reason! Collusion!
When I said no collusion, I meant no ablution (We were not pure ritually or otherwise.), allusion (We are very poorly read and as such made no references to anything.) or Lilliputian (That word doesn’t even sound alike, but I wanted to be clear we had none of them!).
When I said there is no collusion, I was just being polite, you know sometimes you just want to be polite to get out of an unpleasant conversation.
I meant specifically that no one ever came up to the campaign and said, “Would you like to collude?,” although, to be fair, if that had happened, folks might have said yes, that was just the sort of campaign it was, in fact maybe that did happen and maybe they did say yes, but, uh, the point is, I forget the question.
When I said that there was no collusion, I meant there was some collusion.
Follow Alexandra Petri on Twitter @petridishes.
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