The big news of today is the release of the transcript of the call between Pres. Trump and Ukrainian Pres. Zelensky. During that call, Pres. Trump asks for the Ukrainians “to do us a favor.” So the big question is what is favor? What does ‘favor’ mean, specifically does it entail the expectation that the favor should be repaid?
While it’s hard to answer that question definitively, it is actually quite clear that for Pres. Trump the answer is yes. A favor is to be repaid.
The reason this question is so important is that already the debate is raging about whether there was any “quid pro quo” in this request for a favor. Many of the President’s defenders are loudly saying there was no hint of a quid pro quo, and so the president is exonerated by the transcript.
To consider this question of whether asking for a favor is suggesting a quid pro quo, I first considered doing a detailed semantic analysis of ‘favor’ in part by investigating its etymology, its synonyms, and patterns of usage. But then it occurred to me that how the word tends to be used may be largely irrelevant in this case. While convention matters in meaning, a speaker’s intention is king. So how has Pres. Trump used the word?
Luckily, Trump is a prolific Twitter user. So we can do a quick search on Twitter for every time he has used the word ‘favor’ in tweet. By my count, there are 63 tweets in total with that word. Of these three seem clearly to convey that for Pres. Trump, favors are to be repaid. Here they are:
Then there is also this one, which I take to be suggestive, but not definitive:
I take this tweet to convey that Donny Deutsch should have returned the favor but didn’t, and therefore is open to criticism.
These tweets, I believe, constitute a clear pattern of usage by Pres. Trump, indicating that for him favors are to be repaid. We should, therefore, interpret the transcript in light of this pattern of usage.
In the interests of transparency, it is important, I think, to review the other tweets. Most of them can be ignored because ‘favor’ is used as a verb (2 times) or as ‘in favor’ like a court ruling in his favor or someone being “in favor” of Hillary Clinton (39 times). Another contains a quote from the founder of the New York Times, who said the news should be “without fear or favor.” Several more are ambiguous, not clearly addressing the issue of whether a favor should be repaid or is merely an act of kindness to another (19). Many of are re-tweets from supports saying he should do the country “a favor” and run for the presidency. Of his own, he said that A-Rod should do the Yankees a favor by retiring and Brent Musburger did himself a favor. There is room for interpretation of these 19 tweets, but I don’t read any of them as clearly stating or even implying one doesn’t need to repay a favor.
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