The Politics Thread (PLAY NICELY!)

I find it funny that people think that the KKK endorsing you isn't a sign for concern. Not that it was just the KKK either, but hey.

I'd much rather talk about the President of the United States making doublespeak about events in Sweden that didn't actually happen (corroborated by Swedish sources including their former Prime Minister). How about them apples?

Right he is attacking the "fake news media", calling them the "enemy of the American people"

Now I am no expert on the US-media, but that list contains quite a few media outlets, some of which I sort of connect to "the more reasonable press". Like the ones that are trying to keep up with fact-checking Trumps constant false claims/lies.

Like that non-existent incident in Sweden, which apparently was based on something Trump saw on Fox News.
So yeah Fox News seems to be the kind of media Trump likes. Also obviously breitbart news propaganda.

Doesn't look good at all.

trump in the press conference linked several times above :
“I watched this morning a couple of the networks, and I have to say, “Fox & Friends” in the morning, they are very honorable people. Not because they are good, because they hit me also when I do something wrong, but they have the most honest morning show. That’s all i can say. It’s the most honest…”

Fair enough, i also don't agree with him and his bias towards fox and breitbart. On the other hand, you really do have to admit that there has been a very concerted and unified attempt by virtually the entire corporate media (even fox to an extent) to attack him really quite unfairly. It's so bad it even reaches all the way down here in Australia with the ABC doing obviously biased pieces that use suggestive connotations, specific tone etc. and all the like. Soft propaganda.

Just as the most recent example of terrible journalism, google "Donald Trump invents sweden terrorist attack" and see every single network carry the headline. Then read the actual transcript it was referring to. No mention of terrorist attack anywhere within the sentence or the surrounding context of his speech, but all the media picked up on this particular angle in order to drive a specific narrative.

This dynamic driven by the press is creating a wedge in society, between the people who fall easily into believing any anti-trump headline without checking out sources etc. and the people who might initially have realised they were being bullshitted who now only worship fox/RT and block out news from any other source. My parents have fallen into the latter. Both are dangerous behaviours, and it's all because of a repeatedly dishonest press.

The only silver lining to all of this is that Trump can't do anything about the first amendment anyway even if he wanted to. If i was in control of an MSM network, i would get off this ridiculous topic and stop shadowboxing an enemy that isn't there. Taking the short term ratings hit is worth the restructure to fill the obvious long term market demand for an objective and fair news platform.

One could only wish journalism returned to ethics and integrity. The "goal-based" reporting, does reduce the quality. I don't want to "govern media", but if ever there was a good "boycott" or "opportunity for market", it'd be to kill biased media with an unbiased media venture.

Trump is the perfect smokescreen. He's easily provoked, he's childish/vain and loves to exaggerate, he's perfect media bait. I wonder what's happening behind the smokescreen what is Bannon up to?

Trump literally referred to "the attack last night in Sweden".

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/feb/19/sweden-trump-cites-non-existent-terror-attack

Yet another post where elodea defends Trump and attempts to undermine the press reporting on him. How about you talk about the times where Trump has slammed the press. The times where he has snubbed reporters.

Because if you can actually find a situation where the press has flat-out lied about Trump, then we can get into the wonderful topic of "maybe he had it coming".

EDIT

And before you try to back out of your claim by focusing on the semantics around "terrorist attack" vs. "attack", I'll throw in the rest of the President's exact words on the subject:

When you refer to other specific terrorist attacks when mentioning Sweden, the direct correlation is that you're referring to a terrorist attack.

Now, if you want to defend Trump further by relying on the defense of plausible deniability, I recommend once again some introspection with regards to how you get confused and frustrated at people mistaking you for a Trump supporter.

@Gorbles

This is what i'm talking about man, you've been misled by political interests within the media. Look at the contradictory statements you made in the same post.

Where is the word "attack"? Where is the word terrorist? Not everything that happens is a "terrorist attack". I'll even give you the benefit of the doubt and quote the sentence in full context with the preceding and following paragraphs of his speech. A cntrl+f for 'terrorist' and 'attack' turned up 0 hits.

Spoiler

We had a court that I disagree with. I disagree with big league — and by the way, whether you read it or whether you watch it on television when other lawyers come on, many of them can't even understand. They're saying how do you come up with that decision. It cannot be more simple. So they're ruling on what I just read you and they don't even quote it in their ruling because you can't because it's too obvious. So we will do something next week. I think you'll be impressed. Let's see what happens.

Here's the bottom line. We've got to keep our country safe. You look at what's happening. We've got to keep our country safe. You look at what's happening in Germany, you look at what's happening last night in Sweden. Sweden, who would believe this. Sweden. They took in large numbers. They're having problems like they never thought possible. You look at what's happening in Brussels. You look at what's happening all over the world. Take a look at Nice. Take a look at Paris. We've allowed thousands and thousands of people into our country and there was no way to vet those people. There was no documentation. There was no nothing. So we're going to keep our country safe.

And we all have heart, by the way. And what I want to do is build safe zones in Syria and other places so they can stay there and live safely until their cities and their country, that mess that I was left by Obama and everybody else — folks, we were left a mess like you wouldn't believe, but we're going to build safe zones. We're going to have those safe zones.

There is a difference between offhand casual speech grammar and written grammar. Trump is not a polished public speaker. A more accurate translation: Look at what is happening in Sweden, as I did last night watching a documentary on Fox.

It was obvious to me that was what he was saying even before Trump clarified it in public because I don't have a preconceived filter that interpretes everything as if Trump has devil horns out of his head.

And by the way, Trump isn't wrong. Sweden is literally the rape capital of the western world.

Don't take my word for it either. Suggest you watch this from a Swedish citizen. My favourite line from him,

1. You are falling back on the semantic defense of him literally not using words. See my last paragraph.

2. You are still defending Trump, despite your repeated protestations that you don't support him. Weird how that always seems to happen in this thread.

3. Sweden has a definition of "rape" that most right-wingers would run ten miles from. Here, let me grab a handy image for you:



So when conservatives go full Daemon King on the rape statistics in Sweden, it's always funny to remind them that what constitutes rape in Sweden wouldn't pass as rape in most of the EU, nevermind America.

I'd argue the Swedish definition is somewhat extreme- there comes a point where 'being tough on lawbreakers' becomes 'turning everyone into criminals'....

I wasn't commenting on my own thoughts about the law; it's more that this results in a higher-than-expected (for other countries and cultures) reported amount of rape cases. Which conservatives all over the West then use to demonise immigrants and other perceived causes of such.

@elodea

So let me annotate this a bit into the things he correlates to:

If you give this to a completely neutral person who doesn't even know who Trump is and ask them to fill in the blank, what will they fill in? "Nice snowy evening" or "Terror attack last night in Sweden"?

After he stated "I watched something on Fox yesterday about stuff that happens in Sweden" I can agree he might have actually somehow transformed that into those statements above.

Doing this really only is possible by "knowing Trump" and generally seeing him to be as positive as possible.
A person who has no clue what this all is about certainly would make the quick jump to "there must have been a terror attack in Sweden last night". It's a very reasonable thing to do. Trump isn't fit to be president if he is so bad at talking that he constantly creates such misunderstandings.

The President of a nation should be able to express himself without potentially creating misunderstandings with people who don't already know him.

And that's all assuming he really just misspoke. I would not be surprised if he actually did this intentionally:

It gives him more reasons to attack the media, like you just demonstrated.

Some of his supporters plain believe everything what he says, at face value without the in-depth analysis you seem to be capable of, and there probably are going people around the internet discussing how the terror attack in Sweden is being covered up by the media.

Trump somehow managed to become President, one must assume he isn't completely stupid, even though it looks like it.


EDIT:
A random other thought I always have when this happens:

This all ties into the concept of "political correctness", which really just means "consider wtf you are saying and what it implies before you say it". Something any person, especially a President, should do.

Trump is a master at political incorrectness at this point and the group of people who somehow have concluded that considering the implications of words before they're spoken is bad love it.

This part is probably more relevant to the current topic of discussion

@cola_colin
Unfortunately it's become a meme that when people talk about issues with islam or immigration they are only referring to terrorist attacks and bombings. That's just one symptom. I'll give you that Trump was certainly talking about terrorist attacks, but only in the sense that x is a subset of [x,y,z]. The root problem is difference in culture and unwillingness to integrate that end up being expressed in criminality - ranging from theft, sexual assault and rape, etc. all the way up to bombings. Disclaimer: not making a generalisation statement. Yes, there are definitely good immigrants, but you need to filter for them.

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Rioting, looting, car burning in Rinkeby Stockholm, a police no go zone. Trump is a time traveller confirmed. Progressives bow down to the god emperor.



http://www.cnbc.com/2017/02/21/overnight-riots-in-predominately-immigrant-stockholm-suburb.html

Well ****...

I wonder if being a time traveler could be seen as an unfair advantage going into an election, rendering the result void.

Okay. Hillary couldn't even win a redo-election, so I have nothing to worry about. The DNC wouldn't even try it again, we'd either get Warren or Sanders, acceptable. The congress would still probably be red or split, and I would hope that would either force them to cooperate, or last 2 years and be flipped out for a blue congress.

you know that's not how sentences work.

you don't punctuate end of sentences with single tacked-on words. get off trump's twitter feed