“We are sending an armada,” Trump said on April 11.
How to interpret this seemingly straightforward statement?
The press, American allies, and possibly North Korea understood it as an action IN PROGRESS which is what the PRESENT PROGRESSIVE verb tense implies.
“We ARE SENDING an armada.” Now.
But a week later, when it turned out that the ship was NOT going towards North Korea but rather in the opposite direction, Press Secretary Sean Spicer claimed that Trump had been using the PRESENT PROGRESSIVE in its other sense: a PLANNED FUTURE event.
“We ARE SENDING an armada.” Soon.
And the PRESENT PROGRESSIVE just got political.
To see Sean Spicer’s semantic defense:
