I don’t agree with everything Trump does, and I’m not sure I understand him, but I think an example would be something like this:
After Charlottesville, which was a demonstration between primarily people who wanted confederate monuments removed and those who wanted to keep the confederate monuments. Of course with any demonstration, a few radical idiots showed up, modern day Nazis, KKK members and a guy who killed a woman with his car. The protests became violent.
When commenting on the event, Trump made one comment out of many that there were “good people on both sides.” It seems clear that the only fair reading of that comment, even at the time and without Trump’s subsequent statements, that Trump was talking about the two mainstream sides of the protest itself. Many people who want confederate monuments removed are good people; many people who want to keep confederate monuments are good people.
But some media outlets improperly implied or outright said that Trump claimed that there were good Nazis or KKK members. When Trump explains that hell no that’s not what he meant, the media doubles down. Then when there is the shooting in Pittsburgh, some in the media claims that maybe, just asking questions here, that Trump saying that there were good Nazis caused violence against Jews.
If the “real” news was reported, then we could have a civil debate over whether good people could support keeping confederate monuments.
Instead the “fake” news causes division and violence such that GOP supporters get coffee thrown on them at a college campus and are subjected to a profanity laced tirade that they are Nazis.
This isn’t the only event. Some examples:
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Grab 'em by the pussy. What’s always left out of that is the very next statement when he says “when you’re a star, they don’t care.” We could have a civil debate over whether that statement was hyperbole or whether it is morally right to use one’s star power to bed women or commit adultery. What we get is the statement that Trump bragged about sexually assaulting women.
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Does Trump want to enforce immigration laws or does he hate brown people?
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Does Trump want to combat voter fraud, or less charitably have fewer Democrats voting–or does he wish to bring back Jim Crow and disenfranchise black people?
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When the separates children from their parents who cross the border illegally and are arrested is this a necessary but unfortunate consequence of the criminal justice system, or is he placing children in concentration camps?
IMHO, the “fake news” is the latter in these examples. They needlessly throw unsupported invectives into these debates which cause rock throwing and vicious hatred on both sides instead of prompting civil discourse. IOW, it is nothing Trump is saying or doing causing such a vicious divide, but the “fake news” media creating these narratives and causing the divisions.
We can debate whether Trump’s policies are right or wrong, absolutely we can do that. But we can do it without resorting to ridiculous and unsupported deductions from what he actually said.
Of course, both sides are guilty of it. The problem is that when the GOP does it, we have a few crank websites and sometimes Fox News does it. When the Dems do it, they have the support of the major media outlets like the Washington Post, the New York Times, CNN, NBC, ABC, CBS, MSNBC and the list goes on.
That is Trump’s point. I don’t agree with the entirety of it, but there is a kernel of truth to it.