‘Two Weeks’ Doesn’t Mean What You Think It Does

When President Trump asserted that the Iran War would be over in two weeks yesterday, I was reminded of this New York Times piece last year:

“It is a slippery thing, this two weeks — not a measurement of time so much as a placeholder. Two weeks for Mr. Trump can mean something, or nothing at all. It is both a yes and a no. It is delaying while at the same time scheduling. It is not an objective unit of time, it is a subjective unit of time. It is completely divorced from any sense of chronology. It simply means later. But later can also mean never. Sometimes.”

Also from CNN: “Trump has been setting two-week deadlines since at least the start of his first term in 2017 — for policy plans, long-awaited decisions or unspecified major announcements. Many never arrived.”