President 'The Donald' Trump and Surprising Consequences - Mod warning in OP

Gbear

Water John wrote: »

It is quite simple, any obfuscation here, are simply attempts to muddy the waters.

It's part of a more general effort at poisoning the well, not just from which journalism and politics are drawn, but the entire well of reality.

They - the Russians, the alt-righters, Trump and co, by intention or because of the way their brains work, depending on the individual - want to turn politics into a crap shoot.

Reasonable candidates will easily defeat insane ones in a campaign catering to a reasonable electorate, but if you've comprehensively eroded a chunk of the populations grasp on reality, it removes most of the advantages reasonable candidates have - evidence, logical positions, consistency, clear convictions about what they stand for.

It doesn't mean they win automatically, but it gives fanatics and extremists a fighting chance.
It's very obviously unscrupulous, ruthless and totally self-serving, but if they weren't that way to begin with they wouldn't be the way they are.

BoatMad

Reasonable candidates will easily defeat insane ones in a campaign catering to a reasonable electorate, but if you've comprehensively eroded a chunk of the populations grasp on reality, it removes most of the advantages reasonable candidates have - evidence, logical positions, consistency, clear convictions about what they stand for.

It doesn't mean they win automatically, but it gives fanatics and extremists a fighting chance.
It's very obviously unscrupulous, ruthless and totally self-serving, but if they weren't that way to begin with they wouldn't be the way they are.

agree, whole heartily and the challenge for the centre ground of responsible and respectable politican opinion, is to devise a way to counter the current abuse of social media and 24/7 fake news to make ordinary people see that they are being sold a pup by the fanatics and extremists like Trump, Farage etc . Right now the moderates have been completely out manoeuvred by the fanatics grasp of how " low-info" voters receive their perceived " truths "

namloc1980

Huckabee Sanders just spoofed and told a different story about why Comey was fired in the latest press briefing, then said it wasn't really a big deal! The White House are tripping over there own lies at this stage.

Kitsunegari

InTheTrees wrote: »

45,000 people died every year in the USA before obamacare because of lack of healthcare.

Trump wants to return to that.

I am baffled as to how you think that's "irrational". Is not wanting people to die irrational??

Certainly not and you can see my thoughts on AHCA on this thread but that doesn't mean that either bill really protects those in most need of healthcare in the US. ACA actually fines individuals for not paying for health insurance while Trump's AHCA doesn't fine individuals.

namloc1980

It's frankly incredible that Trump has claimed in an interview today that Comey told Trump he was not under investigation over dinner while at the same time Comey was asking if he could stay on as FBI Director. That's unreal. Vast conflict of interest. Just incredible.

listermint

BoatMad wrote: »

agree, whole heartily and the challenge for the centre ground of responsible and respectable politican opinion, is to devise a way to counter the current abuse of social media and 24/7 fake news to make ordinary people see that they are being sold a pup by the fanatics and extremists like Trump, Farage etc . Right now the moderates have been completely out manoeuvred by the fanatics grasp of how " low-info" voters receive their perceived " truths "

Challenge them at every turn . Point it out .

They aimed to high, trump single handedly saved the whole of Europe from the same issue. Europeans don't want a trump . He highlighted the underlying constant russian ploys . It's daily it's consistent it's unerring and it has been going on a decade.

BoatMad

listermint wrote: »

Challenge them at every turn . Point it out .

They aimed to high, trump single handedly saved the whole of Europe from the same issue. Europeans don't want a trump . He highlighted the underlying constant russian ploys . It's daily it's consistent it's unerring and it has been going on a decade.

its already been proven that facts dont change people minds , as Noonan is fond of saying , "if your explaining you're loosing "

its not enough to challenge, the baton must be removed from these people

perhaps we are living through a period where this experiment will show people the error of believing in extremists promising snake oil cures

Maybe we have to have a Trump !!!!

listermint

BoatMad wrote: »

its already been proven that facts dont change people minds , as Noonan is fond of saying , "if your explaining you're loosing "

its not enough to challenge, the baton must be removed from these people

perhaps we are living through a period where this experiment will show people the error of believing in extremists promising snake oil cures

Maybe we have to have a Trump !!!!

I would never listen to anything noonan has to say.

The only combat is to highlight they rely on being subversive and not being called out .

Stop doing that and they win.

BoatMad

listermint wrote: »

I would never listen to anything noonan has to say.

The only combat is to highlight they rely on being subversive and not being called out .

Stop doing that and they win.

I only quote Noonan cause he's a wiley auld middle ground politician

The fact is Trump was fact checked all the way through the election , it did nothing to counter the nonsense he said , if anything he just claimed it was all fake news

personally I think we will have to plumb the depths of democracy to demonstrate the fallacies these people project , You have the bizarre situation , where the dispossessed and poor of the US and the UK ( and elsewhere ) are now putting they faith in billionaire presidents and manifestly right wing monetarist conservatives , any reading of these peoples real policies shows that its the poor and the dispossessed that are going to get severely hurt under these people , not " saved"

listermint

BoatMad wrote: »

I only quote Noonan cause he's a wiley auld middle ground politician

The fact is Trump was fact checked all the way through the election , it did nothing to counter the nonsense he said , if anything he just claimed it was all fake news

personally I think we will have to plumb the depths of democracy to demonstrate the fallacies these people project , You have the bizarre situation , where the dispossessed and poor of the US and the UK ( and elsewhere ) are now putting they faith in billionaire presidents and manifestly right wing monetarist conservatives , any reading of these peoples real policies shows that its the poor and the dispossessed that are going to get severely hurt under these people , not " saved"

Yes and trump is unraveling and the UK stuff will the same.

We should never stop presenting facts.

BoatMad

Yes and trump is unraveling and the UK stuff will the same.

thats what I said, I think we have to go through a period where by direct actions, the foolish supporters of Breixt and Trump, realise this is all snake oil and that complicated situations cannot be resolved with Twitter and 128 characters policy outbursts

the sad thing is the dispossessed and poor that have been taken in by this stuff will be the very people that will be crucified by these people . sadly the rest of us will have to go along with all this damage until the scales fall from their eyes

Trouble is the backlash will then be equally horrific

demfad

The war has begun:

DAG Rosenthal called Burr and Warner out of Senate hearing for an urgent impromptu meeting.

Acting FBI head McCabe has stated he won't brief the WH on the Trump/Russia investigation.

FBI raid headquarters of FUND RASING COMPANY OF REPUBLICAN PARTY

The rocket docket grand jury of Eastern District Virginia lives up to its name and has executed several warrants on the last couple of hours.

Professor Moriarty

demfad wrote: »

The war has begun:

DAG Rosenthal called Burr and Warner out of Senate hearing for an urgent impromptu meeting.

FBI raid headquarters of FUND RASING COMPANY OF REPUBLICAN PARTY

The rocket docket grand jury of Eastern District Virginia lives up to its name and has executed several warrants on the last couple of hours.

Seems kosher. https://www.google.ie/amp/baltimore.cbslocal.com/2017/05/11/fbi-investigation-annapolis/amp/

Water John

Trump rowing back on the DAGS involvement, that he was going to sack Comey anyway. I suspect this is in response to the DAGS threat to resign.

Trump said he asked Comey over a phonecall if he was under investigation.
Highly irregular and out of order.

Call me Al

Also that over dinner Comey told Trump he wasn't under investigation whilst also asking Trump if he could keep his job with FBI.

Trump just said this on a tv interview. Crazy crazy stuff!

namloc1980

Water John wrote: »

Trump rowing back on the DAGS involvement, that he was going to sack Comey anyway. I suspect this is in response to the DAGS threat to resign.

Trump said he asked Comey over a phonecall if he was under investigation.
Highly irregular and out of order.

I doubt Trump cares about the DAG or his threat to resign. My view of it is that his ego couldn't take the media reports that he acted on the recommendations of the DAG and Sessions. He had to come out and say it was all him - that he takes orders from no one.

Water John

I disagree. When things go tits up, Trump always puts the decision on someone else.

Why is he reversing this time?

Has he reached 'an understanding' with the DAGS? No special prosecutor??

Professor Moriarty

Oh dear! Trump's press secretary Sanders just said that that removing Comey will help bring Russia investigation to end.

Taxi for Sanders.

aloyisious

If true that he made a public statement on the Comey sacking affair, then the DAG is making a separate statement to Don & Co "mess with me at your peril, I'm no Comey, I'll resign at a media briefing at the DOJ before you can fire me". No way anyone can put the media story down as a fake.

demfad

Water John wrote: »

Trump rowing back on the DAGS involvement, that he was going to sack Comey anyway. I suspect this is in response to the DAGS threat to resign.

Trump said he asked Comey over a phonecall if he was under investigation.
Highly irregular and out of order.

Yes. I think he has enraged the entire civil service with the Comey firing. The GOP leaders clearly are up to the neck in this.
I wouldn't be suprised if a big leak of some of the recordings proving treason that foreign Intel has is dropped soon.

namloc1980

Water John wrote: »

I disagree. When things go tits up, Trump always puts the decision on someone else.

Why is he reversing this time?

Has he reached 'an understanding' with the DAGS? No special prosecutor??

Rosenstein has come out to say he didn't threaten to resign.

ThisRegard

Kitsunegari wrote: »

People have an irrational hatred from Trump.

There's nothing irrational about it.

ThisRegard

InTheTrees wrote: »

Trump signed an executive order today establishing an agency to investigate voter fraud in the last election.
No doubt he hopes his idiot claim of three million illegal votes will be proved.

The ACLU has filed a FOI request for the information that Trump is basing this executive order on. The head of the commission has been sued by the ACLU 4 times for voter suppression. He lost all 4 times.

demfad

namloc1980 wrote: »

Rosenstein has come out to say he didn't threaten to resign.

Source?

aloyisious

namloc1980 wrote: »

Rosenstein has come out to say he didn't threaten to resign.

CNN reporting that he did not say he was quitting.

SORRY for error, The new acting Dir of the FBI, in face of a repeated question in the senate, stated that he was NOT going to comment in response on whether the President was told by Jim Comey that he was not under investigation, even after the senator said he was not asking for a comment, but was asking him a question. He said the FBI does not comment.

mcmoustache

Professor Moriarty wrote: »

At the risk of repeating myself, if you don't consider The Guardian, NYT and the WP to be worthy news sources, who have news outlets are reliable sources of '"traditional journalism"?

Good luck with that.

If there's one thing that I've noticed with Trump supporters (the non-racist ones at least), is that they rarely have anything positive to say about him. Instead you get FUD, deflection and whataboutery.

With that in mind, in relation to questions on trust-able media, you're unlikely to get a straight answer. Instead, you'll get FUD - WaPo will be compared to breitbart and FAKENEWS. They're not going to admit where they get their news from because that would give their game away.

You see, Trump's most obvious characteristic is his dishonesty. Everybody lies but Trump's dishonesty is orders of magnitude greater than any public figure that I've ever seen with the exception of shítty dictators (and by extension their surrogates). Those who support people like Trump have no regard for honesty and don't see anything wrong with his. If they did, they wouldn't be supporting him. This tells you all you need to know about his supporters on social media.

Water John

It's simple. If Trump and Comey discussed whether Trump was being investigated, both were out of order.
I can understand the difficulty for Comey, to be asked by the President, and telling him your not going to answer it. Especially, if the President can fire you from your job.
Trump in asking it put Comey in an invidious position.

ThisRegard

aloyisious wrote: »

He said the FBI does not comment.

Which is why Trump's claim he was told he's not under investigation 3 times is questionable, to put it mildly. I wonder was him saying the FBI does not comment was targeted at those statements?

Overheal

Kitsunegari wrote: »

If people think that unnamed officials are trusted sources of information then I give up.

Unnamed to the public perhaps. The journalist/entity who runs the story and stakes their reputation on it will know and have documentation. This is not a new concept. The only new thing is the volume of instances especially by online only outlets to circumvent the unwritten code of integrity about that, from your Russian state media to your tabloids to your spin sites, at their own peril.

There are numerous examples of the Washington Post reporting deliberately misleading articles along with the Guardian, NYT, Breitbart etc. If you want to take everything you read in the Washington Post as gospel then more power to you. I'm not here to provide you with piles of content to change your mind.

Sure, and I can't think of any entity that has an untarnished reputation. But here's the weakness of the argument, in trying to dismiss the source entirely because of reputation blemishes. I could, for instance, still read RT and take into consideration what their slant is, read FOX and CNN for their slants, etc. etc. and make educated decisions on who is probably fibbing and who is reporting the truth. In particular, a lot of the time these "anonymous sources" you discredit are, especially of late, quickly vindicated when someone from the WH for example or a loyalist who is in the loop will come out and make public criticisms about the leaks.

For all of Trump's yammering for example if he had just taken the same approach to genuine reporting ("Fake news! Totally unfair etc") and applied it to the leaks ("Fake news all lies etc.") instead of saying "OMG WHO LEAKED THISSSS," the public would really have no hard confirmation that the reports were accurate. But instead his temperament is famous.

What's extraordinary is using unnamed sources as a basis for an argument. You can believe everything you read in the press. I'll stick to traditional journalism where your sources can be checked.

I don't think you know what traditional journalism is if you don't seem to acknowledge Reporter's Privilege.

Ah ok, so unnamed sources should be relied upon as fact because of Watergate. Stop using one example to proove a point.

Woe the irony: stop using anecdotes to dismiss the utility of anonymous sourcing as well.

Like I said you can believe whatever you want from the papers and I'll remain sceptical until proven otherwise. There is a huge difference between Watergate and what happened in TWP yesterday. If you can't see how ridiculous it is to compare the two then I'm not sure there is a point in debating it any further.

Humor me.

ACA actually fines individuals for not paying for health insurance while Trump's AHCA doesn't fine individuals.

If that is the best defense for AHCA, it's not saying much... https://consumerist.com/2017/05/11/senate-obamacare-repeal-bill-may-result-in-millions-more-losing-insurance-loss-of-additional-protections/?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=socialflow

namloc1980

demfad wrote: »

Source?

CNN. One of their reporters tweeted it hours ago @evanperez.