That’s why I said earlier that a need to tack to the center and be reasonable is sort of a catch-22 for Trump, because that’s simply NOT the Donald Trump who got the free publicity he needs politically and personally. It’s the unfiltered, outrageous Trump that did that; moderate, reasonable Trump is kinda boring in comparison, and it’s not who his supporters are voting for to begin with. Will enough moderates, independents, and undecideds both pay attention to that Trump AND reasonably think that this is his real, usual mode, compared to the guy they’ve already heard about? I find that doubtful. Will Republicans who don’t like him seize onto sane Trump as an excuse to salve their conscience enough to vote for him? Much more likely, but the fact that the possibility is even a requirement in the first place should be kind of troubling for Republicans.
“Greetings! My name is Donald J. Trump, and I am running for US president. If you can give me your bank-account details, absolutely YUGE returns await you upon my election.”
It could be done that way. But there’s a simpler method. Here’s the quote from Politico: [INDENT][INDENT]“I have absolutely no intention of paying myself back for the nearly $50 million dollars I have loaned to the campaign," Trump said in a statement. “This money is a contribution made in order to 'Make America Great Again.”
It is shocking to me. how partisan the media are. If I look at the facts presented on media linked here, and media I generally find trustworthy, the emerging image of Trump is… well, as it is pictured here.
When I look at FOX, there’s a totally different set of facts, a totally different way to present it.
I guess, what I want to say is a thank you to the Dopers voting for Trump that still present their viewpoints here. Otherwise we would be singing one song here and anywhere between 10 and 40 percent of voters sing a totally different song.
And a question: is there, besides politifact, still one news outlet in the US that is, by all parties, considered to actually be factual, fair and balanced?
In this climate of hyper-partisanship, I don’t think that is possible. Each side considers any news outlet that doesn’t slant in their favor to be suspect. Perhaps the Christian Science Monitor?
Actually, there are people who do not consider PolitiFact to be especially factual, fair, or balanced. (At least not so much so that it deserves the sanctimonious ultimate-arbiter-of-truth image that it cultivates.)
Eh. As far as the facts presented, that Fox headline list is not far off. Commentary and opinion pieces, punditry and prognostications? Well of course Fox has their flavor.
Nah, that professor is an idiot too: “the problem with fact-checking projects was ‘there are only a finite number of statements that can be subjected to thumbs-up/thumbs-down fact-checking’” strikes me as a statement that only an idiot could make with a straight face, as if it was an insight of some kind.
This guy’s clearly pro-Trump, though he claims otherwise. His analysis of the Trump phenomenon has been brilliant and prescient. Take what you get from the majority of posters here, and balance against Scott Adam’s analysis of Trump.
He has some interesting ideas – he seems to believe that the one with the best persuading skills will always win. But I think he misses something – great big chunks of the population can’t be persuaded on certain issues. To take it to an extreme, the best persuader in the world won’t be able to persuade most Jews that they deserved to be killed in the Holocaust.
There’s a plateau with certain ideas that even a great persuader will never exceed, and I think Adams is missing this consistently.
In that respect, it is a circularity. If they can’t be persuaded, then the candidate is not the best persuader. The winner is always the best persuader, because he gets the most votes. Voters are more easily persuaded by someone they agree with. If his opponent has policies the voters irrevocably disagree with, then he is not a good persuader.