Dowd wanted to dress it up as much as possible, to say, it’s not your fault. It’s the burden of the office. He knew in this confrontation he could not be insulting. He could not say what he knew was true: “You’re a fucking liar.” That was the problem. So Dowd said, “You do have trouble staying on the subject. And that can defeat you. Then you try to catch yourself, and you misstate something, and bam. It’s like Mike Flynn not remembering the conversation with Kislyak.”
