That was Trump on President Obama Monday, responding to the president's unwillingness to say that the United States is at war with radical Islam in the wake of the Orlando nightclub shootings. Trump isn't saying that Obama is purposely misunderstanding the threat posed by people like the shooter in Orlando over the weekend. He's saying that "people" are saying it. As Johnson notes:

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Trump frequently couches his most controversial comments this way, which allows him to share a controversial idea, piece of tabloid gossip or conspiracy theory without technically embracing it. If the comment turns out to be popular, Trump will often drop the distancing qualifier — “people think” or “some say.” If the opposite happens, Trump can claim that he never said the thing he is accused of saying, equating it to retweeting someone else’s thoughts on Twitter.

Trump has a long history of the "I'm not saying, I'm just saying" approach to political rumor-mongering. Take this tweet from 2012:

It's not him who is suggesting Obama is a "black Muslim." It's Madonna!

At a rally in New Hampshire last year, a man said to Trump that Obama was a Muslim and added: "We have training camps growing where they want to kill us. That's my question: When can we get rid of them?"

Trump's response? "We're going to be looking at a lot of different things. You know, a lot of people are saying that, and a lot of people are saying that bad things are happening. We're going to be looking at that and many other things."

During an appearance on "Meet the Press" soon after that incident, Trump was asked by moderator Chuck Todd if he could be comfortable supporting the idea of a Muslim being president. Here's what Trump said:

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I can say that, you know, it’s something that at some point could happen. We’ll see, it could happen. Would I be comfortable? I don’t know if we have to address it right now. Some people have said it already happened, frankly. Of course, you wouldn’t agree with that.

In one fell swoop Trump is able to push a totally unsubstantiated — and often entirely discredited — rumor ("Obama is a Muslim") into the public's bloodstream while maintaining some level of plausible deniability. It's not HIM who is suggesting we already have a Muslim president. He is simply the conduit of what "people are saying."

Take it out of the political context for a minute. Imagine if a rival reporter gave an interview to the Columbia Journalism Review where he/she said this: "Chris Cillizza seems like a good guy. People say he plagiarizes some of his best work. But, I've never seen him do it so I can't really offer an opinion about that."

That person has now floated the idea of me being a plagiarist without, exactly, saying I am a plagiarist. And I would — almost certainly — be forced to respond to questions about whether I have ever plagiarized. (NOTE: I haven't!) And, even if I denied it, there would be those who might not be totally convinced by my insistence that I hadn't ever taken someone else's words as my own.

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What Trump understands is that it's impossible to disprove some of the innuendo he puts into the public dialogue. President Obama says he's not a Muslim? Of course he does! What is he going to do, admit it? He'd be impeached!

And, by adding the "this isn't what I say, it's just what I've heard" layer to his suggestions, Trump ensures that he will never be directly responsible for the comments. The only way to hold him accountable for some of the things he says is to ask him to name names of the "people" who have said some of the unsubstantiated things he says. But, Trump can always say they were private conversations with private citizens and that he doesn't feel comfortable revealing their identities. And then where do you go? Nowhere.