Correction.

Hi, all.

I hate to write you twice in one day but I felt it was important to correct something I wrote in this morning’s email. Thanks so much to the reader who flagged it for me.

In today’s Chop Wood, Carry Water I wrote:

Did you know that during the Bush administration the NRA actually had an office in the West Wing? This has apparently been the case during several Republican administrations. Shocking, right?

A reader, Mike Crowley, soon commented:

Although the Bush administration was NRA friendly, the NRA did not have an office in the West Wing. I worked in a White House agency at the time, and this would have been a difficult thing to hide, as well as wholly inappropriate.

This comment, of course, caused me immediate consternation. I’d been taking notes carefully in the meeting and writing down exactly what I’d heard, so I couldn’t imagine that I’d gotten it wrong. But I also realized that the idea did, in retrospect, seem surprising. Maybe I’d misunderstood?

I told Mike that I’d contact the White House and clarify, and I did.

It turns out that the speaker had been speaking more “theoretically,” than literally. He said he was referring to this article, in which the NRA’s second-ranked officer at the time joked about having an office in the West Wing if Bush won the election.

I’m not sure how I missed his tone, or how I understood him to mean “several Republican administrations” instead of just one, but I did, and I truly apologize. I have edited the web version of the newsletter to remove the misstatement, but can’t change the version you have already received. I regret any inconvenience this may cause you.

Sigh. I wish I were perfect, my friends. I also wish I had a staff to check my work for possible errors. One of these days, perhaps.

In the meantime I hope you’ll forgove my occasional mis-steps. Thanks for understanding.

Jess

P.S. — To make matters worse, I had also repeated this erroneous information in a TikTok I made about the meeting. I had to take it down, edit that line out, and re-post it. Oy! Must be more careful next time!