Hillary Clinton's Russian Gift Gaffe Lost in Translation

2 years ago

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On the heels of unwarranted British apoplexy over President Obama's attempt to culture their Prime Minister up a

little, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is taking heat from the right-o-sphere for a gift fiasco of her own. From The College Politico:

Our utterly brilliant Secretary of State managed to embarrass our entire nation today by screwing up a simple one word translation:

In addition to the red button on a black-and-yellow base, the State Department had written "reset" in English and what it thought was its Russian equivalent.

"We worked hard to get the right Russian word. Do you think we got it?" Mrs. Clinton asked Mr. Lavrov.

"You got it wrong," he said, adding that the word he was looking at meant "overcharge," though "overload" may be more precise.

Maybe Mr. College Politico is too young to get the real point of this gaffe, which isn't actually the translation. Anyone who remembers a time from the Reagan era on back would know that the last thing you want to give Russia is "the button," no matter what's written on it. Why not just give Vietnam a "tripwire of friendship?"

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Filed Under: Hillary Clinton, Democrats, Gaffes

Tagged: reset button, ResetButton, russian reset button, RussianResetButton

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