Dr. Word follows Brewer’s verbal slide from lie to coverup to weak admission

by David Safier

The latest from the AZ Guardian is that the Accidental Guv's campaign said she "misspoke" when she said most of the illegal immigrants are drug runners and worse.

Let's take a look at the language that got Brewer in this mess and her attempts to extricate herself.

Here's her original statement, from a recent debate.

[T]he majority of [the illegal immigrants] in my opinion and I think in the opinion of law
enforcement is that they are not coming here to work. They are coming
here and they’re bringing drugs. And they’re doing drop houses and
they’re extorting people and they’re terrorizing the families.

Pay attention to the wording. Brewer made a "Not this, that" statement. They're not coming here to work. They're coming here for other, more nefarious reasons.

Her final words, after those I just quoted, don't take a Dr. Freud to figure out. Brewer knew she had backed herself into a verbal corner — in other words, she lied — and instead of qualifying her statement, she decided go on the offense:

That is the truth, Matt. That is the truth.

How many times have you heard someone make an outrageous statement, then, seeing people staring at him skeptically, say, "Really, I'm not kidding! It's true! Look it up!" There's no clearer admission that he's lying through is teeth, and knows it.

Methinks Brewer doth protest too much with her "That is the truth, Matt. That is the truth." It isn't the truth, and she knows it.

The next day, Brewer tried to qualify her statement so maybe it came a little closer to the truth.

She said the drug cartels are giving border crossers drugs to smuggle into the U.S.

Brewer said the motivation of "a lot" of the illegal immigrants
is to enter the United States to look for work, but that drug rings
press them into duty as drug "mules."

Brewer shifted her assertion, hoping no one would notice the contradiction. First she said "they are not coming here to work." Then she said they're coming to look for work, but they end up carrying drugs.

First she demonized the border crossers as pure evil — the favored position of the immigrant haters. Then, in a vain attempt to justify her position, she said many of them aren't demons after all. They're hapless victims of the drug cartel.

But even that wouldn't wash, since all the data says it isn't true. Most crossers who are apprehended don't have drugs on them.

Finally Brewer relented, according to the Guardian in a password protected article.

[Brewer's] campaign said hours later that the governor misspoke.

Misspoke. Didn't make a mistake. Didn't exaggerate for her own political purposes. Didn't double down and repeat, "That is the truth, Matt. That is the truth." She misspoke. A simple slip of the tongue.

Oh, and "there have been some missteps" in her use of numbers.

In case you're not up on pol-speak, the construction, "There have been . . ." is a verbal dodge. In that phrasing, it's just something that happened somewhere out in the political ether. It can't be attributed to anyone, certainly not Brewer.

"There haven been some missteps . . ." is a variant of the more common "Mistakes [or missteps] have been made." It's a non-admission admission.

For my money, Brewer hasn't done enough by simply saying she maybe got her numbers a little bit wrong. Someone should ask her to state the facts about the percentage of border crossers who are looking for work and how many are up to no good. She should talk to some Border Patrol officials so she can give us some real numbers.