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This is the first sentence from President Biden's tweet:

I’m going to make sure the federal government does what’s needed to be done in Kentucky.

By the emboldened phrase, I think he means "what needs to be done". Is it a mere typo or is there more to using "is needed" instead of "needs"?

FYI, I've looked at an earlier thread saying that "what is needed to be done" could work, but I don't think such a reading would work in the current tweet, because such a reading would force the sentence to mean "I’m going to make sure the federal government does what’s needed for the federal government to be done in Kentucky," which I think is nonsensical.

listeneva
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  • "what is needed [by the people] to be done [by the government]" -> passive + passive infinitive; "what needs to be done [by the government]" -> active + passive infinitive. -- Both are good. – Greybeard Dec 16 '21 at 09:50
  • So is "make sure the federal government does what's needed in Kentucky." I would not have thought of Twitter as a hospitable platform for pleonasm, but there it is. – Brian Donovan Dec 16 '21 at 12:30
  • @Greybeard If both are good, how come this Ngram says otherwise? – listeneva Dec 16 '21 at 14:27
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    @BrianDonovan I don't think it's pleonasm, because what's needed is clearly different from what needs to be done. – listeneva Dec 16 '21 at 14:28
  • @listeneva 1. The Ngram shows the frequency not the "correctness". 2. Just because something is infrequent, does not mean that it is wrong. – Greybeard Dec 16 '21 at 20:14
  • @Greybeard Like I have said in the OP, I'm not saying that what’s needed to be done is impossible English. It can be used in rare contexts as shown in the earlier thread I've cited. But I don't believe your analysis of the construction to fit in with the OP's context. – listeneva Dec 17 '21 at 01:34
  • I agree with the OP about what Biden intended. This is a type of minor grammatical error that many people make in extemporaneous speech. – Barmar Dec 17 '21 at 02:13
  • @Barmar Thanks! That's what I have suspected. It's one thing to make a minor error (every human being including the POTUS does), but isn't it entirely a different thing not to recognize and/or acknowledge the error even after it's been pointed out? I mean, what's going on here? Is it because this "error" is somehow that hard to notice? Or is it because they didn't want to acknowledge that the President made such an error? – listeneva Dec 17 '21 at 02:40

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