My experience has been that journalists take the liberty of fixing "makes you sound stupid" errors like that in most cases -- sometimes they'll double check, bu

My experience has been that journalists take the liberty of fixing "makes you sound stupid" errors like that in most cases -- sometimes they'll double check, but often times they will fix that sort of word choice issue and move on. Indeed, it's the sort of thing that would likely get flagged by a copy editor who wouldn't even know the quote came from an email.