Rumsfeld's "unknown unknowns" comment

[Great_Dave]

@pravnik

As you know, you go to the press conference with the statement you have, not the statement you want or might wish to have at a later time.

You win the thread.

[Shalmanese]

I have trouble believing I could make the same point Rumsfeld was trying to make without seeming equally as confusing. I’ve tried quite a few times and every time, it ends up being a jumbled word salad.

In fact, I challenge anyone in this thread to take the original quote:

Reports that say that something hasn’t happened
Are always interesting to me,
Because as we know,
There are “known knowns”;
There are things we know we know.
We also know there are “known unknowns”;
That is to say we know there are some things we do not know.
But there are also “unknown unknowns” —
The ones we don’t know
We don’t know.

And preserve the original point while making it significantly more comprehensible. I’ve tried and it’s much harder to do than it looks.