The Trump-Stormy Daniels viral tweet that’s a lesson in how NOT to analyse words.

This tweet appeared on my timeline this morning

And it’s a lesson in how not to read words and get the conclusion you want to arrive at.

Look at Jack’s conclusion: “Stormy Daniels admits… that she was not paid hush money”.

Now look at the words in the statement he posted. Stormy doesn’t say she was not paid hush money. Her words are, “I am not denying this affair because I was paid hush money’. She explicitly says only that she is not denying the affair because she was paid to do so.

When reading words, it's easy to jump to conclusions, but we use the words we do for a reason. We word things, deliberately or subconsciously, in the way that best suits our needs. There’s a reason that this statement doesn’t deny the payment of hush money and until we know that reason, we can’t conclude this is a denial of receiving money.

There’s some debate over who wrote this statement. Trump supporters claim it’s from Daniels, and Stormy herself says someone on Trump’s wrote it and she was asked to sign it.

Whatever the truth (and you can have a good look at who wrote it by analysing the wording), it’s an extremely weak denial.

Look at all the potential embedded confessions within a few short lines:

“An alleged sexual relationship I had with Donald Trump many, many, many years ago”

“This alleged affair”

“I was paid hush money”

“This affair”

Again, the wording is deliberate, and these are all ways people refer to an event that happened, not an event that is the product of imagination.

“There was no affair or sexual relationship and I haven’t been paid money to deny this” would be more believable. But this isn’t what was said.