Vox Sentences: Donald Trump's word salad is getting poisonous

Donald Trump might have just implied that someone should shoot Hillary Clinton (???); the renewed Russian-Turkish friendship is bad news for Europe; the US is crushing it at the Olympics so far.

Vox Sentences is written by Dylan Matthews and Dara Lind.

TOP NEWS

"The Second Amendment people"

Sara D. Davis/Getty Images

• Donald Trump, during a speech in Wilmington, North Carolina, on August 9: "if [Hillary Clinton] gets to pick her judges, nothing you can do, folks. Although the Second Amendment people, maybe there is, I don’t know."

  [Vox / Andrew Prokop]

• Was Trump implying that someone could stop Clinton by shooting her? Was he implying someone could stop her judges by shooting them? Was he implying something else entirely? Unsurprisingly, the transcript of his comments in context doesn't really offer any clues (because the "context" is a word salad).

  [Andrew Kirell via Twitter]

• Impressively, the Trump campaign managed to find an explanation of the statement — that Trump was referring to stopping Clinton by voting — that is totally, 100 percent not supported by the actual text.

  [Donald J. Trump]

• Making threats against a federal official (or a hypothetical future federal official) is illegal. But there's a whole vein of Supreme Court jurisprudence dedicated to distinguishing "true threats" from other (First Amendment–protected) threat-like rhetoric.

  [The Atlantic / Garrett Epps]

• The real problem here isn't the law; it's the morality. Even Jesse Helms realized he'd gone too far when in 1994 he joked that President Clinton might need a bodyguard on a North Carolina visit.

  [NYT / Stephen Greenhouse]

• Close Trump ally and adviser Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-MS) concedes that Trump's gone too far this time.

  [Christina Wilkie via Twitter]

• Trump may think he's distanced himself from the worst interpretation of his remarks. But the concern isn't that his critics will interpret it badly. It's that his supporters — primed to believe the election is "rigged" — will embrace the most menacing possible interpretation.

  [Vox / Dara Lind]

Budding autocrat befriends veteran autocrat

Mikhail Svetlov/Getty Images

• Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan met with Russian President Vladimir Putin Tuesday, beginning a full restoration of trade and diplomacy after Turkey shot down a Russian jet in its airspace last fall.

  [Al Jazeera]

• The meeting signals that after putting down a coup last month, Erdogan is turning away from the West for support.

  [Reuters / Olesya Astakhova and Nick Tattersall]

• The propaganda-larded Turkish press is full of insinuations that the CIA helped back the coup plot, which Erdogan blames on an exiled cleric who lives in Pennsylvania.

  [Daily Dot / Efe Kerem Sozeri]]

• Erdogan's government has arrested more than 26,000 people since the coup was suppressed — most of them in the military, civil service, or education.

  [The Independent (UK) / Lizzie Dearden]

• At the meeting Tuesday, Erdogan praised Putin because, unlike European countries, "he didn’t criticize me on the number of people from the military or civil service who had been dismissed."

  [Le Monde / Christophe Ayad, Marie Jego, and Marc Semo]

• Russia and Turkey are resuming plans for a Russian natural gas pipeline — which will make it harder for Europe to reduce its reliance on Russian energy sources.

  [WSJ / Selina Williams]

• Also, Erdogan and Putin share a certain authoritarian self-love. At the meeting, they literally ate off plates with their own faces on them.

  [BuzzFeed News / Hayes Brown]

Katie Ledecky 4ever

Odd Andersen/AFP/Getty Images

• After four days of Olympic competition, the US is smoking other countries in the medal count. U-S-A! U-S-A!

  [SB Nation]

• What's the secret to Team USA's success? Is it "cupping," the suddenly popular homeopathic suction technique? (No, it probably isn't, because the medical benefits of cupping are unclear at best.)

  [Vox / Brian Resnick]

• Is it the epic dominance of its gymnastics team? (Yes, in part; the team easily won gold in the team all-around finals Tuesday, coming a full 8 points ahead of the silver medalists.)

  [Vox / Alex Abad-Santos]

• Is it the team's commitment to steroid-free clean living, exemplified by straight-talking, straight-swimming gold medalist Lilly King? (Not exactly; King's straight talk extends to calling out her own teammates who've previously used steroids.)

  [NYT / Christopher Clarey and Karen Crouse]

• Is it the existence of Katie Ledecky? (Yes. Big reason. Ledecky is one of the stars of the games.)

  [Slate / Willa Paskin]

• Is it the US's enlightened attitude toward women in sports? (Maybe, I guess, but you wouldn't know it from some of the news coverage.)

  [The Guardian / Lindy West]

• Is it the fact that host country Brazil is too terrified of widespread protests to relax and win some medals? (Possibly — and since a judge ruled Tuesday that spectators can wear political T-shirts, expect dissatisfaction in the venue to get more visible.)

  [BBC]

• Is it something in the water? Specifically, whatever turned one of the pools a very icky shade of green on Tuesday? (Hopefully not. That's super gross.)

  [Gizmodo / Darren Orth]

MISCELLANEOUS

The history of feminist punk, in 33 songs. [Pitchfork]

• During her mid-'00s break from Hollywood, Winona Ryder "got really into constitutional law for a while."

  [NY Mag / Heather Havrilesky]

• Municipal zoning recently turned 100, and that is more than enough. It's time to let people build the homes and apartments they want without interference.

  [Bloomberg / Justin Fox]

• Everything about the world of Olympic pin trading is delightful, up to and including the fact that "the Games’ most coveted pin, created by a Japanese press group, features a tiny Pikachu."

  [Wired / Kyle VanHemert]]

• Matchbox Twenty got their start covering Counting Crows songs because of course they did.

  [A.V. Club / Becca James]

VERBATIM

"The United States men’s gymnastics team … has been brainstorming ways to market their sport better. They would like to be objectified." [WSJ / Louise Radnofsky and Ben Cohen]

• "Hermione reads Lena Dunham’s memoirs and is grateful that she skipped over late adolescence fighting pure evil."

  [Medium / Holly Wood]

• "I have divided my personality. There is Vanessa Beecroft as a European white female, and then there is Vanessa Beecroft as Kanye, an African-American male. … I even did a DNA test thinking maybe I am black? I actually wasn’t."

  [Vanessa Beecroft to NY Mag / Amy Larocca]

• "Fatso was exactly what his name implied: a wombat with an anatomically implausible butt."

  [Slate / Matthew Dessem]

• "'Oh, this is wonderful,' she continues. 'There are Vikings around you.' She’s smiling like she has just awarded me a prize. She doesn’t say much more, other than these Vikings are ready to rise up and do battle for me."

  [Washington Post / Cathy Alter]

WATCH THIS

What it took to discover bacteria in the 1670s [YouTube / Joss Fong, Dion Lee, and Julia Belluz]

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