President Donald Trump calls the media “the enemy of the people.” Even his own daughter says that isn’t true. Yet, Trump makes the claim nearly every day. He says, and believes, the media is out to get him. Does he really believe that? Perhaps it’s one of his many diversionary tactics.
The media is not the enemy of the people. On the contrary, the media is among the only ways of holding our politicians accountable. That ability has been diminished in recent years as the political scene has become less transparent and more polarized.
Trump commits two logical fallacies on a regular basis: The fallacy of hasty generalization and the fallacy call “red herring.”
Hasty generalizations are general statements without sufficient evidence to support them. They are general claims too hastily made, hence they commit some sort of illicit assumption, stereotyping, unwarranted conclusion, overstatement, or exaggeration.
A “red herring” is a distraction from the argument typically with some sentiment that seems to be relevant but isn’t really on-topic. This tactic is common when someone doesn’t like the current topic and wants to detour into something else instead, something easier or safer to address.
In Trump’s case both of these fallacies come together. We also call it lying.
On the same day, about two weeks ago, more than 350 newspapers around the country printed editorials debunking President Donald Trump’s claim that the media is the enemy of the people.
This newspaper joined that effort with a guest editorial by the president of the Utah Press Association.
The reality is newspapers print the truth. Yes, once in awhile someone gets something wrong — humans can and do make mistakes. But, these are unintentional. A retraction is usually issued as soon as a mistake is recognized. There have been a few instances where a reporter has intentionally stated something that knowingly wasn’t true. These have been dealt with harshly. The reporter usually loses his/her job and for, the most part, never works in the business again. These instances are few and far between.
Last week Trump’s former campaign chairman Paul Manafort was found guilty on eight counts of bank and tax fraud. Trump’s “fixer” Michael Cohen pleaded guilty to eight felony charges while implicating the president in payoffs to silence women about sexual affairs. Cohen admitted this was done to influence the outcome of the election.
Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s team has brought 191 criminal charges against 35 defendants which have resulted in six guilty pleas, so far.
That doesn’t sound like a witch hunt to me.
Trump cares about no one but himself. When someone is no longer of value to him, he doesn’t hesitate to throw him under the bus, as he has done with Michael Cohen. As he has done with so many before Cohen.
Let me explain how all this works. A main Trump tactic is diversion. He wants to divert attention from any real issue to something else. That’s exactly the intention of crying “fake news” and blaming the media.
A recent example of this is Trump’s admission that Russia is a potential threat to the 2018 election — and that Russian efforts will support Democrats.
Yeah, right.
During the recent Helsinki meetings Vladimir Putin said directly he wanted Trump to win the 2016 election. Putin wanted Trump to be president. We can only surmise why. The claim that Russia will be supporting Democrats is simply Trump setting the stage so that he can deny Russian help to the GOP.
He did the same thing during the 2016 Presidential election. He claimed election fraud long before the election. Everyone expected Clinton to win, even Trump. He was merely setting a stage.
It’s call deniability. If something happens that Trump doesn’t like, he can simply deny he had anything to do with it or anything to gain or that the only reason he didn’t get what he wanted was that the other side cheated.
He’s doing the same thing with the Mueller investigation. Trump calls it a witch hunt. If Mueller finds anything, Trump can just say, “witch hunt,” and his supporters will fall in line.
It’s the same thing Trump has done with Hillary Clinton’s emails since before the election. Trump continually attempts to divert attention away from real issues by using another issue he has already (in his own mind) turned into a scam.
Enough already. Hillary lost (at least the Electoral College). It’s been almost two years. She’s not going to jail. Move on.
Thomas Jefferson said if he had to choose between, “a government without newspapers or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter.”
That idea has never been more applicable than it is right now. If you support Trump, you are supporting a man who wants to be a dictator. Think about it. Do we want to be free, or do we want to turn this country into Russia?
Press the enemy of the people? Hogwash
STEVE CHRISTENSEN