Vice President's account posts then deletes a recognition of the Armenian Genocide.

OK. Hold the phone. I want to walk you through a specific sequence of events that every adult on the Office of the Vice President’s communications staff signed off on.

Tuesday. The Vice President of the United States is in Yerevan, Armenia. He is participating in a wreath-laying ceremony at the Tsitsernakaberd Armenian Genocide Memorial. This is a real place. It is the place. Every visiting dignitary to Armenia, in every administration, since the place was built, lays a wreath. The wreath gets photographed. The dignitary signs a guest book.

The Vice President signed the guest book. He laid the wreath. Fine. All according to the script that has run for a century.

The official Vice President account on X, in the immediate aftermath, posted that the Vice President and Second Lady had attended a wreath-laying ceremony to honor the victims of the 1915 Armenian genocide. The word genocide was in the post. Lowercase G. On the public record.

That post got taken down. Within the hour.

The reason given, by the Vice President’s office, was that the post was sent in error. Sent in error. The man, on the trip, laid a wreath at the Genocide Memorial. That part was on the itinerary. That part was not in error. The post, describing what the man on the trip just did, was in error. These are two different sentences, hon, and only one of them can be true. Either the trip happened or the post described it. If the post was an error, then what was the trip?

The reason the post was an error is the kind of reason you whisper at the bar at eleven thirty. The administration policy is to not use the word genocide for the 1915 mass killings of Armenians. Why? Because Turkey, a key NATO ally, objects. Turkey is also, as of this week, playing mediator in the Iran nuclear talks the President is trying to land. So a Vice President accidentally noticing a historical fact in the country in which the historical fact occurred is, suddenly, a diplomatic problem.

That is what sent in error means. It means we did it on purpose. It means the press secretary, Taylor Van Kirk, reposted a more careful version with no genocide in the caption, and a photo of the handwritten note in the guestbook, which was beautifully ambiguous. It means the Vice President of the United States, on a state trip, paid respects with his hands and revoked them with his account.

I have seen bachelor parties run with more clarity. I have seen insurance estimators tell more honest stories. The Vice President visited the one place in Armenia where you cannot use the word the place is named for and his staff deleted the one word the visit was for.

Funny how the men who tell you they speak plainly are the ones who, when they get out of the car, have their staff go back and delete the plainness.