No, it’s not making up the facts. But which facts the press presents and how the press interprets and analyses and spins those facts are different matters.
It is a fact that most if not almost all of the press has been significantly hostile to Trump ab initio and you need to bear that in mind. Is it really so difficult for you to understand that just as Fox News puts a pro-Republican slants on its reports so another other news organisation might put anti-Trump slants on what it reports? And that therefore you need to adjust for that? And that’s before you start on the need for sensationalism and so on.
Your whole argument is that Trump should have more credibility because sometimes the media doesn’t report the facts that you want them to. How does that make trump more credible? How does that change his lies into truths?
Maybe they shouldn’t have used up so much capital defending inauguration crowds that weren’t there.
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
No; I’m saying that you should be less credulous of the press. When a news organisation reports something you need to ask yourself, “Why is XYZ News telling me this?” You do this with salesmen, don’t you? When XYZ News then analyses and comments on that news you need to put that analysis through the XYZ News filter. You do both with Fox News, don’t you? Or do you just blindly trust a news item because it’s hostile to Trump / Republicans / whoever?
Trump comes out with outrageous falsehoods almost daily. We’re not just talking about falsehoods that are misleading; we’re talking about things that are so demonstrably and patently false that they can’t even be taken seriously be a person with a basic level of education. His falsehoods represent an attack on the very idea that truth is based on facts. If a news gathering agency operates on the assumption that truth is based on facts and observable phenomena, then I don’t know how else they are supposed to react to any of his lies with anything other than negative reviews. News media have a responsibility to report facts that they find, even though it’s clear many of their readers don’t care or don’t want to see the facts in front of them. Indeed, many of Trump’s supporters seem to live in a parallel universe in which “truth” is based on their own perceptions and life experiences. So what we have is two different groups of people: one which wants to live in a world based on facts, and one which wants to live in a world in which truth is however they see it. The first group of people will continue to hound Trump relentlessly for his lies; the second will continue to dig in deeper and cling to the belief that he, and they, are being persecuted.
But all the evidence - including Trump’s own statements - suggest that we’re not being given a false impression. The media isn’t ignoring the ninety percent of the time when Trump is being intelligent to show us the ten percent of the time when he’s being dumb. They’re showing us Trump being dumb because Trump spends most of his time being dumb. A media cover-up would be if they ignored the ninety percent of the time Trump was dumb and only reported the ten percent of the time he acted intelligently.
And if you’re going to argue that I’m wrong and that Trump really is intelligent, explain why so much of the evidence against Trump is recordings of Trump himself. Sure, intelligent people sometimes say or do dumb things. But they don’t do it on a regular basis the way Trump does. To say or do dumb things that consistently, you have to be genuinely dumb.
this is what i’ve been wondering. the campaign/russia thing has the possibility of taking down pence as well as trump.
the republican majority took the chance on the supreme court, but i don’t think they would want to chance president pelosi. although that would have me laughing like a loon.
better to have trump out first, move pence up, and pull in someone in back of pence. that way if pence gets pulled under, and the house goes democratic, you still hold the white house. for sure the ptb in the house and senate are thinking about this and formulating a plan. although given the track record on the aca, i don’t have high hopes for a good plan.
If the *fact *is that Trump really is a lying, foolish, corrupt tool of Putin, how do you think the press should present that fact? Can *you *“bear in mind” that it just might be true and that the press has a fundamental responsibility to say so?
Factuality does not derive from fealty. And fealty has no place in a democracy, while respect for reality does. Bear that in mind.
You know, if one person says the earth is round, and the other person says the earth is a hexagon shaped pie-plate… We don’t have to give equal time to both, or “split the difference”, and agree that the earth is an oblong hexagon shaped pie.
One person is correct, and the other is an uneducated loon. Facts matter.
While true, the fact would remain that outside of his role on The Apprentice, every time that Trump has come up in the media for the last 30 years, it’s been about something shady that he’s engaged in. To be sure, you could say that they’re against him now because of his politics. But what about for the preceding 29 years?
And as Little Nemo says, it’s quite clear that Trump is stupid if you read transcripts of his interviews, legal deposition, his tweets, etc. Politically, he’s your average Joe with no idea how anything works and he has believed that simple solutions - like a wall across the US/Mexico border - are practical and effective, and simply haven’t been considered by politicians due to corruption or being too Liberal or whatever. But your average Joe isn’t 70 years old and can adapt to new situations and learn new things. Trump had a full year of campaigning to realize that he was hurting himself by being rude and crass to women, potentially losing 50% of the electorate, and yet he never adjusted that one thing nor apologized for it.
You might say that it’s not unreasonable for Trump to have a lot of Russian contacts, due to being a big businessman. But how many friends of Bill Gates or Warren Buffett do you think have chosen to go onto Russia’s propaganda channel? I promise you that Russian contacts are not a regular thing in the business world, certainly not to the extent that your campaign staff is going to have three people who interview on RT appearing in it. But hey, maybe it’s an aspect of the real estate market! Is there any connection between Russia and the real estate market? Well so, it just happens to be that New York and Florida are popular with the Russian mafia as a means to launder money, and that’s been pointed out previously to Trump’s run for President. E.g.:
Is it possible that a guy who first made the news in the 80s for driving his Ponzi scheme into bankruptcy before he could be busted for it, sets up a University for Suckers, etc. would help launder money? Is there any good reason for a regular, clean businessman to be best pals with Paul Manafort and Roger Stone, two guys really popular in Russia and on RT?
It’s fair to distrust the media. But if you’ve followed the media prior to 2016, it’s already been clear that Trump is at least as dirty as the Clintons have ever been accused of. Though, they’ve never bankrupted themselves.
If you look back at the Clinton presidency, it wasn’t Fox leading the way on calling the Clintons dirty. Whitewater was first reported upon by the New York Times. Similarly, the New York Times reported the Cattle Futures issue. Monika Lewinsky was passed over by Newsweek, but the Washington Post was quite happy to jump in. Bill Clinton was not persecuted by the right using information that could only be found in conservative news. The bulk of information came out through the two newspapers who actually do investigative reporting, and that information was relayed and amplified by the right. While I don’t watch or read Fox, I would be reasonably sure that they simply take news from the New York Times, the Washington Post, AP, and Reuters, and edit as they desire. They don’t uncover new and interesting things that the media is ignoring. They take all of the available information and remove part of it. The ‘witch hunt’ for the Clintons was rooted in main stream media reporting. (Most likely, it wasn’t a witch hunt, they’re just shady.)
Why did they investigate the Clintons, even if the reporters probably mostly supported the Clintons? Because it allows them to make all of the money. Scoops are profitable, when the mass public cares. So long as everyone would be interested, then hello money.
Obviously, there are outlets who do censor stuff in the Liberal direction, e.g. Newsweek, CNN, etc. And I’m not denying that most of the reporters at the New York Times and the Washington Post are probably Democrats and spin the information just slightly in that view. They probably cared more about Bush II’s approval of torture than most of the American public. (The American public was happily cheering on as Kiefer Sutherland electrocuted brown men, every week.)
But like I said, we already knew that Trump was a shady bastard. If we circumvent the media and look directly at the man, and what he does, it’s clear that he’s just not all that bright, and certainly unsuited to be President. There’s no strong evidence that the New York Times or Washington Post aren’t just as happy to report on any scandal, by a politician of any leaning. There’s many reasons to be deeply suspicious of Trump’s favor towards Russia and the connections he has to Russian propagandists, since the law of probabilities just demand that there’s more to it than that.
So if we do see the media reporting that he’s an idiot and that there rumblings of shady shit between him and Russia…it just doesn’t seem like a clever conspiracy to mislead us. It all scans. There’s nothing there that seems at odds with what we should expect from what we can see.
And then if we look at the people who are working with Trump and want him to succeed, i.e., the Republican party. They’ve not been stonewalling the investigations. They’re in charge and they’ve approved something like 5 separate investigations into the man’s campaign. They wouldn’t do that unless they were concerned.
Again, it all scans.
To reject the theory that Trump is stupid and dirty and has questionable ties to Russia is simply unsupportable. You’d need a conspiracy that goes back 30 years and a media that goes so far as to invent the very existence of Russia and RT, and convince us that those are real things when secretly they aren’t.
I tell you now, I have been to Russia. It was crap, but it’s a real place. The media did not make it up. RT is real. Roger Stone’s interviews to RT sure seem genuine to me. While I don’t know what the political leaning is of Business Insider is, I’m not feeling like it’s probably a Liberal bastion of Hippies and Flower Power, and yet we’ve got them feeling pretty confident in reporting this about Paul Manafort.
Of which, being on this side of the Atlantic, I am unfamiliar - we had Alan Sugar
I am aware of his business shadiness. You might recall that there is a Trump golf course near me…
Remind me, how well has the Israeli wall worked?
Have either been on the BBC or whatever the American equivalent is? How about France 24?
You are very much mistaken. Many companies hereabouts have Russian contacts. And Chinese. And Indian. And so on. There’s a whole world outside America.
And it’s a problem in London too, and no doubt other cities.
As yet, both sets of accusations are unproven. Innocent until proven guilty, remember?
We find that as yet there is nothing that has been substantiated.
Or thought that there was insufficient evidence. Or they want him out of the way so they can install Pence.
To a biased American Democrat who wants it to all be true. Indeed, it may indeed all be true. But it may not.
Please do continue to demonstrate your parochial American attitude. I have not myself been to Russia, but my parents have, as has my brother. So have friends and ex-colleagues. There are ex-pat Russians living locally - an acquaintance dines with one weekly, for instance. I’m well aware of the corruption in Russia. Indeed, as an aside, let me tell you a little story:
Some years ago, I was working at Gulfstream’s maintenance depot at Luton Airport. There was a private flight hangar next door with whom we shared parking. One day they had a Russian visitor. He was the stereotypical Russian gangster: physically built like a bull with a moll on his arm and a bookish accountant trailing behind. And yes, I was told that he was indeed exactly what he appeared to be.
Well, since the International Court of Justice in the Hague declared it illegal under international law and the UN General Assembly has condemned it, it hasn’t exactly been a success on the international front. More importantly, the Israeli wall wasn’t designed or built to prevent illegal immigration (since some portions of the barrier are just rolled barbed wire or fencing topped with barbed wire and not a wall at all). It was built for security purposes to funnel those attempting suicide or other attacks to come through certain security checkpoints. It has been considered largely effective in doing so, with a major factor in it success being that it has walled off certain cities and communities entirely from the rest of the West Bank, making all traffic to/from them subject to Israeli security controls.
Another major factor to consider is that the total length of the Israel-West Bank border is 708 kilometers (440 miles). The total length of the U.S.-Mexico border is 3,201 kilometers (1,989 miles). Israel built portions of the barrier on land that they themselves recognized as being under Palestinian control/ownership. The U.S. would not have the option of building the wall on Mexican land and thus there would be significant land seizure via eminent domain of border landowners required. Even still, a wall of that length could not be continuously monitored at every point and would still be subject to weak points and other means of exploitation (such as tunnels) that would significantly reduce its impact. But most importantly, (as of 2006), 45% of illegal immigrants in the U.S. illegally were foreign nationals who entered the U.S. legally but overstayed their visas. A wall will do nothing to prevent that.
One of the bigger concerns with Trump’s ties to Russia is not ordinary business dealings and contracts, but specifically funding. As a result of Trump’s many business bankruptcies in the '90s, he had trouble getting U.S. and Western bank loans. There have been indications that he turned to Russian banks as a major source of capital for his businesses. This would go beyond mere one-off deals or transactions but would mean that his business are in the process of paying Russia back on those loans, which would give Russia and Russian banks leverage over Trump’s businesses. Since Trump won’t release his tax returns, we don’t know any personal indebtedness or business ties to Russia, let alone the state of his various businesses.
Yes, I’ve met many wealthy people and traveled through the Mediterranean. I stayed at one of Trump’s hotels once in New York, over a decade ago. I work regularly with China and India. People do know people from different countries. But there’s a certain spread that is more or less common, and there are certain subgroups that are more or less likely to exist in any industry. Most American rich people mostly hang out with other American rich people. There might be a smattering of other nationalities, but either you meet through your hobbies (golf, cars, etc.) or you meet through clubs (YPO, etc.) or for business. Only in that third case are you much meeting foreigners, and that’s going to be pretty specific to the nations that you’re trying to break into. Tillerson, as a man in the fuel market, should know a lot of people in the Middle East, Russia, Scandinavia, and select regions in South America. Trump has looked at Russia, but he’s never actually built anything there. And who the hell tries to get into real estate in Russia itself? I’d go for South Africa before ever trying to hit up Russia. At least they’ve got good weather.
Out of a couple thousand contacts that a wealthy man might have, he chooses 10 to act as his campaign staff. What are the odds that two of them are going to be Russian propagandists? And this isn’t just a matter of pure probability. Bill Gates may well know a few wealthy Russians. But he’s not going to pick them when he runs for President. He’s not going to ask them for recommendations on propaganda experts that he can hire in the US. He’s going to call up some of his American politician friends and ask them who they recommend. And they’re not going to recommend Russian propagandists either, because that would just be moronic.
And while, granted, Trump may be a moron, and so it may come down to raw probability in his case, it’s still not likely that this is what he would choose from a random selection of the people he knows, unless there’s a much larger percentage of Russian contacts in his general contact pool than the average or from what we should expect from looking at a map of his businesses.
London, New York, and Florida. Those are the big three. Trump is active in two of them.
Unless you see me chanting, “Lock him up! Lock him up!”, I’m not seeing your point. I’m arguing that it’s more likely that media reports are correct than that the media has a 30 year conspiracy against him.
Yes, evidence of criminal acts would need to be produced for him to be evicted from office. But that has nothing to do with the question of whether or not the media is inventing material.
Unless you are aware of the New York Times writing articles which say, “Lock him up! Lock him up!”, I’m pretty sure that they have said no more than things that are true - or at least, that their sources have genuinely told them (the “FBI request for more resources” appears to have been a false statement by a Democratic congressman, and the “Rosenstein threatened to quit” statement appears to be an overdramatization of what actually happened, but there’s no indication of misreporting on the side of the media, rather these appear to be issues with the sources.) The things they have said amount to that the man is shady, he has many questionable ties to Russia, and that he’s stupid and incompetent. Those aren’t crimes, but the evidence is certainly strong enough to say that those statements would be ruled in favor of by a jury. And, with that being so, further investigation and scrutiny is merited.
