自相矛盾的特朗普：到底给不给WHO提供资金？
But when he was asked a bit later whether it was the right time to delay money for the health agency in the middle of a pandemic, he denied that he said he would. “I’m not saying that I’m going to do it,” he said during his news briefing on Tuesday. “But we’re going to look at it.”
但后来被问及在大流行期间延缓向该卫生机构拨款是否妥当时，他又否认了自己声称会这么做。“我不是说我会这么做，”他在周二的新闻发布会上说。“但我们要考虑一下。”
“You did say you were going to do it,” a reporter pointed out.
“你刚说了要这么做，”一位记者向他指出。
“No, I didn’t,” he said. “I said we’re going to look at it.”
“不，我没说，”他说。“我说的是我们要考虑一下。”
Mr. Trump does not need adversaries to dispute his statements — he does that all by himself. In the course of his daily briefings on the coronavirus pandemic, the president has routinely contradicted himself without ever acknowledging that he does so. In the process, he sends confusing signals that other politicians, public health officials and the rest of the country are left to sort out.
特朗普的言论无需对手来驳斥——他自己已经这么做了。在为冠状病毒大流行召开的每日发布会上，总统经常自相矛盾，却从不承认这一点。在这个过程中，他发出了令人困惑的信号，其他政治人物、卫生官员和全体人民只能自行解读。
Mr. Trump has always been a president of contradictions: a New York mogul fond of ostentatious shows of wealth who appeals to rural working-class voters. A populist whose main recreation is golfing at one of his exclusive clubs. A self-avowed deal maker who ends up mired in gridlock. A publicity hound who cannot get enough of the news media even as he denounces it as the “enemy of the people.”
特朗普一直是个充满矛盾的总统：他是一个喜欢炫耀财富的纽约大亨，却能吸引农村地区劳动阶层的选票。他是一个民粹主义者，主要消遣却是在他的会员制俱乐部里打高尔夫球。他热衷抛头露面，对媒体欲罢不能，却谴责媒体是“人民公敌”。
Over his decades in the public spotlight, Mr. Trump has been a little of everything, whatever he felt he needed to be depending on the moment. He has switched political parties at least five times, proclaimed himself “very pro-choice” before becoming an ardent opponent of abortion rights, supported an assault rifle ban before casting himself as a vocal champion of the Second Amendment, proposed increasing taxes on the rich before cutting taxes on the rich.
几十年来，特朗普一直是公众关注的焦点，什么都沾点，就看他在当下一刻觉得自己需要变成什么。他至少五次更换政党，宣称自己“完全捍卫选择权”后又激烈反对堕胎；他曾支持一项突击步枪禁令，后又宣称自己是宪法第二修正案的坚定拥护者；他曾提议对富人加税，后又对富人减税。
But the advent of these daily briefings over the past month — sessions that stretch for an hour, 90 minutes or even two hours — have put the conflicts on display in a particularly stark way. The longer a briefing goes, it seems, the more likely the president is to waver from one message to the next. And then at the next briefing, the message may be different all over again, but always captured on camera and therefore difficult to deny or explain away.
但在过去一个月里，这些持续一个小时、90分钟乃至两个小时的每日发布会特别突出地呈现了这种矛盾。似乎发布会耗时越久，总统在一种态度到下一种态度之间摇摆不定的可能性就越大。等到下一场发布会，态度可能会再次完全不同，但他的摇摆总被摄像机记录下来，因此他很难否认或辩解。
The briefings have grown longer since they started, and Mr. Trump’s share of the time at the lectern has as well. Since mid-March, the average length of the briefings has grown from 61 minutes to 105, with the president’s speaking time increasing from 20 minutes per session to 53, according to Factba.se, an organization that collects and analyzes data on the Trump administration. In the course of 28 coronavirus events, Mr. Trump has spoken a total of 18½ hours.
发布会耗时越来越久，特朗普占据讲台的时间也变长了。根据专门收集和分析特朗普政府数据的组织Factba.se统计，自3月中旬以来，发布会的平均时长从61分钟增加到了105分钟，总统的发言时间从从20分钟增加到53分钟。在28场关于冠状病毒的发布会中，特朗普的讲话时长达到18.5小时。
His shifting assessments of the seriousness of the virus over recent months have been well documented. Initially, he likened it to an ordinary flu that would “miraculously” go away, then he later called it “the worst thing that the country has probably ever seen” and declared “war” against the virus. Then he aimed to reopen the country by Easter, before retreating and declaring “hard days” ahead.
近几个月来，他对病毒严重性不断变化的评估已被如实记载。起初，他将病毒比作一种会“奇迹般”消失的普通流感，后来他称它是“这个国家可能面临的最糟糕的事情”，并向病毒宣“战”。然后他打算让全国在复活节前复工，随后又收回这一结论，称“艰难的日子”即将来临。
The crossed signals over cutting finances for the W.H.O., however, showed that his contradictions can take place over the course of days or even within the same briefing. Only five days before vowing to review the health organization’s response to the pandemic, he blasted Congress for setting up a panel to review his own administration’s response to it, saying such an investigation “during a pandemic is really a big waste of vital resources, time, attention.”
然而，停止资助世卫组织的混淆信号表明，他的自相矛盾可以在几天之内、甚至是在同一场发布会中发生。就在五天前，他才发誓要调查该卫生组织对大流行的应对措施，抨击了专门成立小组调查自家政府应对的国会，称这种调查“在大流行期间进行是对重要资源、时间和注意力的巨大浪费”。
