I just listened to a YouTube reaction video by someone living in the UK. The poster admitted to not knowing a lot about Trump. The video he chose to react to was admittedly anti-Trump, and the British poster bemoaned the fact that he was hoping to watch something more neutral about Trump so he could have a more balanced reaction piece.
But I’m wondering, could someone versed in politics really make a completely non-committal information video about Trump, and not have it be simply where or when he was born, where and when he first began his political career and maybe a list of his campaign stops?
Could someone make a substantive video on Trump that is not “He’s an unfit, treacherous idiot.” or “This man is an American hero. He is doing his best for us.” ?
I don’t think such a neutral video could plausibly exist.
Years ago I watched a documentary called The King of Kong which followed our hero Steve Wiebe’s efforts to beat the world’s record high score on Donkey Kong as scored by Billy Mitchell. If you ever watch the documentary, Billy comes off as an arrogant jerk and he complained about that. The filmmakers said they delibeately edited the documentary to make Billy appear as less of a jerk but he still looked like one anyway.
What I’m getting at is you can have an unbiased presentation that is unfavorable to one or more parties. The fact that a documentary makes Trump look bad is not evidence of bias.
It’s certainly possible to discuss his accomplishments and failings in an unbiased manner. Under accomplishments, he got two or three SCOTUS justices nominated and approved, he passed a massive change in tax laws, he took a much harder stance on immigration.
Under failures, you have his mishandling of the NATO relationship, his immigration policies leading to family separations (with dozens of children permanently lost), his trade war failures, his mishandling of the COVID response (especially playing states against each other for protective equipment), his thousands of lies, his attempt to extort lies from Ukraine in exchange for much-needed equipment, his insurrection, overcharging the US for hotel space for the secret service, and lots more.
Just stating all those facts as facts (in some interesting manner) will make you think you’re anti-Trump, but he’s objectively a greedy, corrupt, self-centered person and that will just come through with any video that’s unbiased. He has no empathy, which makes it difficult to be a sympathetic figure.
It certainly could be made, but would come across as negative. Because in order to make it feel like a 50/50 deal, you’d actually have to somewhat suppress his bad things and play up his good attributes a bit, which would then not be unbiased.
Adding to previous comment - it could feel more unbiased if one doesn’t make it about his presidency alone. Focus all about his whole life - childhood, upbringing, life in New York, real state mogul, reality TV, and then have the presidency be only the last 10% of the video, since his presidency has only been a few years of his life.
Sure, the issue is simply how long it needs to be.
Maybe you include a smattering of things that he did that you think were bad and a few that you think were good, and refrain from saying which bundle you think either one fit into. But, ultimately, you’re the one deciding how much stuff to put in and what the ratio is between those two sections. That is still, effectively, an opinion piece.
To be fair, you would need to build things from the bottom. You need to start with the Oath of Office and run through what all that means. You need to run through the Federalist papers, John Locke, the Enlightenment, etc. You’ll need to give a history of various amendments to the Constitution. Good and bad is subjective but what is enshrined in the Constitution and, thereby, the Oath of Office, is something that you can attempt to measure against with some amount of objectivity.
Once you’ve done all of that, you need to find some objective way of listing Trump’s accomplishments and major efforts, and go through an analysis of how those match against the Oath of Office, how effective those efforts were in practice, and so on. For each analysis, you need to show how you’re performing the analysis, how you were able to objectively determine which experts to approach, etc. When investigating allegations of impropriety, you’ll need to run through explaining the criminal justice process, who the people were that were running different investigations and how they got into their position, etc.
Overall, you’re talking about a docuseries.
That might be worth producing, but your average person is going to get bored in a few minutes. For the average person, they just want some smoking gun that eclipses all other things. Nuance, calls to tradition, calls to humanitarianism, etc. are all going to be successful or failures depending on the bent of the listener. For most, if they like the guy then they’ll support him. If they don’t, then they won’t.
Sure, you could craft a ‘neutral’ video by carefully editing and stitching together clips of Trump speaking and interviews. But you would have to edit out everything that makes Trump the icon of the “TRUMP” brand; his bloviating, stream-of-consciousness ranting; his rampant narcissism and petty vindictiveness; his casual but assured racism; his careless disinterest for facts and evidence in favor of whatever narrative suits his agenda; and of course, his ever-present misogyny, crass name-calling, and creepy affection for his daughter (Ivanka; Tiffany never gets a mention). What you would have would be a ‘neutral’ video about a generic figure who doesn’t say anything memorable or interesting.
For a counterexample, you could also produce a ‘neutral’ video about, say, Jimmy Carter, that would make him seem calculating, Machiavellian, and maybe even slinging a mild insult or two, even though that is completely at odds with the man and his character in both public and private. With clever editing, you can make pretty much anyone look like anything you want, especially a public figure with a lot of speeches and pressers to sample from.
I don’t think that would help. Donald Trump has always been a narcissistic, raging asshole. Go back to Spy Magazine coverage in the ‘Eighties. Running for and winning the presidency just put his antics on a new level of public attention and scrutiny, as well as the impact he had on society as a whole instead of just beauty pageants and reality TV ratings.
If you make an objective video about something that is objectively bad, then it will look bad in the video. “Unbiased” doesn’t mean portraying a thing in a way that tries not to evoke an opinion from the watcher.
I spent years on Wikipedia trying to help keep bias out of articles. That doesn’t mean that articles never say anything bad about a subject (or good). It just means that you keep it objective and try to accurately portray what good sources say about the subject, without inserting your own opinion into it. And if you do include someone’s opinion, you be sure to attribute it properly and put it in proper context as best as you can, and be sure it’s relevant.
If it wasn’t for Mitch McConnel, that would not have happened. And I very much doubt Trump did anything more than pick from a list.
I’ll say yes. To the detriment of the US.
Wasn’t he sent off to military school since he was such an asshole?
A joke that all he had to do was bully people. Which is one of the things he does best.
That and the MAGA morons. I knew they existed, but did not realize just how bad they are. I know the average IQ is supposed to be 100 but perhaps that number should be revisited.
The fact remains that he nominate and got 3 justices approved and passed a giant change to our tax system. Leaving it at that would leave it unbiased. His followers certainly consider those accomplishments.