 Russell’s strategy depends on two claims. The first is that the negation in a negative existential takes wide scope, applying to the whole sub-sentence and not just the predicate. So, ‘Ronald McDonald does not exist’ does not involve ascribing the predicate ‘is nonexistent’ to the subject ‘Ronald McDonald’. Instead, it is more faithfully represented as ‘It is not the case that [Ronald McDonald exists]’. The second is that ‘Ronald McDonald’ is not a genuine referring expression and the predicate ‘exists’ really means something like is instantiated. Notice that the first in solitude is not sufficient to overcome the problems generated by seemingly true singular negative existentials. Even if the deep form of ‘Ronald McDonald does not exist’ is  ‘It is not the case that [Ronald McDonald exists]’, assuming that ‘Ronald McDonald’ is a genuine singular term, the problem remains of finding in reality some entity to serve as the designation of ‘Ronald McDonald’. That entity is then part of reality and so, assuming that Meinongianism is false, is existent. In that case, the sub-proposition Ronald McDonald exists is true and so its negation false. The problem of true singular negative existentials does not rest on the supposition that they involve ascribing the property of nonexistence. So, it is the second of the above claims that carries the weight of Russell’s solution to the problem of singular negative existentials.