What bothers me about the trump veterans brouhaha
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@jon-nyc said in What bothers me about the trump veterans brouhaha:
Even FoxNews confirmed the reporting.
Glenn Greenwald, another person who's certainly not a fan of Trump comments:
Goldberg claims that “four people with firsthand knowledge of the discussion that day” — whom the magazine refuses to name because they fear “angry tweets” — told him that Trump made these comments. Trump, as well as former aides who were present that day (including Sarah Huckabee Sanders and John Bolton), deny that the report is accurate.
So we have anonymous sources making claims on one side, and Trump and former aides (including Bolton, now a harsh Trump critic) insisting that the story is inaccurate. Beyond deciding whether or not to believe Goldberg’s story based on what best advances one’s political interests, how can one resolve the factual dispute? If other media outlets could confirm the original claims from Goldberg, that would obviously be a significant advancement of the story.
Other media outlets — including Associated Press and Fox News — now claim that they did exactly that: “confirmed” the Atlantic story. But if one looks at what they actually did, at what this “confirmation” consists of, it is the opposite of what that word would mean, or should mean, in any minimally responsible sense. AP, for instance, merely claims that “a senior Defense Department official with firsthand knowledge of events and a senior U.S. Marine Corps officer who was told about Trump’s comments confirmed some of the remarks to The Associated Press,” while Fox merely said “a former senior Trump administration official who was in France traveling with the president in November 2018 did confirm other details surrounding that trip.”
In other words, all that likely happened is that the same sources who claimed to Jeffrey Goldberg, with no evidence, that Trump said this went to other outlets and repeated the same claims — the same tactic that enabled MSNBC and CBS to claim they had “confirmed” the fundamentally false CNN story about Trump Jr. receiving advanced access to the WikiLeaks archive. Or perhaps it was different sources aligned with those original sources and sharing their agenda who repeated these claims. Given that none of the sources making these claims have the courage to identify themselves, due to their fear of mean tweets, it is impossible to know.
But whatever happened, neither AP nor Fox obtained anything resembling “confirmation.” They just heard the same assertions that Goldberg heard, likely from the same circles if not the same people, and are now abusing the term “confirmation” to mean “unproven assertions” or “unverifiable claims” (indeed, Fox now says that “two sources who were on the trip in question with Trump refuted the main thesis of The Atlantic’s reporting”).
And he continues (basically echoing what @bachophile said:
It should go without saying that none of this means that Trump did not utter these remarks or ones similar to them. He has made public statements in the past that are at least in the same universe as the ones reported by the Atlantic, and it is quite believable that he would have said something like this (though the absolute last person who should be trusted with anything, particularly interpreting claims from anonymous sources, is Jeffrey Goldberg, who has risen to one of the most important perches in journalism despite — or, more accurately because of — one of the most disgraceful and damaging records of spreading disinformation in service of the Pentagon and intelligence community’s agenda).
But journalism is not supposed to be grounded in whether something is “believable” or “seems like it could be true.” Its core purpose, the only thing that really makes it matter or have worth, is reporting what is true, or at least what evidence reveals. And that function is completely subverted when news outlets claim that they “confirmed” a previous report when they did nothing more than just talked to the same people who anonymously whispered the same things to them as were whispered to the original outle
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Right. When I said Fox has confirmed the reporting it meant just that. They had found the sources.
So the Grade 1 Trump Defense, ‘liberal rag made up anonymous sources’ needs to be replaced by the Grade 2 defense, ‘disgruntled former staffer talking shit’.
DON’T let them eat cake.
- RFK Jr -
@jon-nyc said in What bothers me about the trump veterans brouhaha:
Right. When I said Fox has confirmed the reporting it meant just that. They had found the sources.
So the Grade 1 Trump Defense, ‘liberal rag made up anonymous sources’ needs to be replaced by the Grade 2 defense, ‘disgruntled former staffer talking shit’.
Actually, the "Fox Confirms" statement translates to "Our reporter talked to the same people who were quoted in the Atlantic."
As Greenwald says, it's hardly a confirmation.
It's just a reiteration.
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I was very specific. I said they confirmed the reporting. Because Trump likes to pretend that “anonymous source” means a reporter made up whatever he wants.
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Military Times poll has Biden with a small lead over Trump among active duty soldiers.
I wonder when the last time the troops leaned toward the Democrat. Probably Johnson in 64 or maybe Truman in 48.
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I give up. You Trump bashers win. Don't anybody vote for him. Vote for the guy who's 6 months away from a fucking nursing home who will raise your taxes, destroy the economy, turn us into another Venezuela, and allow anarchists and Marxists to take over.
Far better to have a bunch of thugs using Maoist methods order you to bow and swear allegiance to their cause than to have someone who will stand up for us. After all, the bastard said something impolite.
DAMN I wonder about some of you people.
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@George-K said in What bothers me about the trump veterans brouhaha:
In other words, all that likely happened is that the same sources who claimed to Jeffrey Goldberg, with no evidence, that Trump said this went to other outlets and repeated the same claims — the same tactic that enabled MSNBC and CBS to claim they had “confirmed” the fundamentally false CNN story about Trump Jr. receiving advanced access to the WikiLeaks archive.
I remember the good old days when Dan Rather quit because "just because the evidence is fake doesn't mean it isn't true".
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There was a lot of "We defend anonymous sources, just look at Deep Throat!" talk today.
OK, fine.
The fact that Deep Throat was in jeopardy on a legal basis is exactly like Goldberg's comment about "mean tweets."
Exactly.
Again, I'm not saying that what these people are saying is false. I'm saying that the medium they used to say it has a shaky history of honesty, and that is shown in the "weather" claim they purported. I'm also saying that Jennifer Griffin's "confirmation" is simply rehashing what the same people said to The Atlantic.
How about some independent reporting, like...Bolton?
And, for the record, as I've said, Trump's a boor.
"Now look here, you Baltic gas passer... " - Mik, 6/14/08
The saying, "Lite is just one damn thing after another," is a gross understatement. The damn things overlap.
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"My pronouns are FA/FO." - Mik, 2024
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@Mik said in What bothers me about the trump veterans brouhaha:
He is. But his polices are better aligned with my thinking.
And there, in a nutshell, is the problem with today's politics.
Personality is conflated with policy.
I'm not sure I could stand to be in the same room with the man, though I could stand to be in the same room with The President of The United States (who happens to be Donald Trump).
As that great line from "Band of Brothers" said, "You salute the rank, not the man."
POTUS 44 won a significant part of the electorate because of his personality
and the fact that he was half-white. As Joe Biden said, he was "clean and articulate." -
Want to know why this story came out? To keep people from talking about the real news story that day - Joe Biden and his son have both been formally named in a criminal case making it's way through Ukrainian court regarding the illegal extortion by Biden that ended up with the prosecutor being fired.
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@Loki said in What bothers me about the trump veterans brouhaha:
Looks like this stupid piece didn’t even survive a week. Another In the endless line of duds. Look at how many fell for it though simply because they wanted to. The so called bias experts caught in their own do loop.
Oh, the guys at The Atlantic say they have more.
Drip. Drip. Drip.
That's the plan.
Which would be fun if Trump wins reelection. Imagine the raspberry heard around the world.
Always remember, Operation Valkyrie was an act of sedition.
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