The use of “evolve” as a euphemism continues a long tradition among public figures, namely, framing uncomfortable revelations in a way that diminishes their own role in them. “Mistakes were made” — the comically unsatisfying admission from the Watergate-era press secretary Ron Ziegler — is considered the gold standard of such statements. William Safire, the late Nixon White House veteran and New York Times wordsmith, described Zeigler’s mealy-mouthed grandiloquence as a “passive-evasive way of acknowledging error while distancing the speaker from responsibility for it.”
Mark Leibovich, “Better Beings”, The New York Times Magazine (15 March 2015), 17.