User talk:Buster7/Trump
Some of the things Trump has said and done
[edit]- Trump was determined to 'expose' President Obama’s birthplace back in 2012, and even claimed to have sent investigators to Hawaii in the hopes of proving Obama wasn’t born in the United States. Investigators never showed up according tothe Hawaiin Bureau of Records.
- “You know, it really doesn’t matter what the media write as long as you’ve got a young, and beautiful, piece of ass.”
- "I didn’t go to the media for this. I have a major talk show. I have a huge following. But I have not been engaged in self-censorship. I made it really clear [on the radio] that I did not endorse Donald Trump, that I have many differences with him, and that Donald Trump is not endorsing me. But I’m going to let my followers know my political opinions in this very important race for president. I think it’s a very un-American thing if a person self-censors himself or does not talk about things. [1] Proceeding comment added by IBestEditor (talk • contribs) 21:34, 13 March 2016 (UTC)
- "I love the poorly educated." February 24
- “When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending the best. They’re not sending you, they’re sending people that have lots of problems and they’re bringing those problems with us. They’re bringing drugs. They’re bring crime. They’re rapists… And some, I assume, are good people.”
- "You know, if it gets a little boring, if I see people starting to sort of, maybe thinking about leaving, I can sort of tell the audience, I just say, ‘We will build the wall!' and they go nuts." http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/31/opinion/sunday/a-chance-to-reset-the-republican-race.html?smid=tw-nytopinion&smtyp=cur
- “I’ve said if Ivanka weren’t my daughter, perhaps I’d be dating her.”
- "Ted Cruz didn't win Iowa, he stole it."
- "My IQ is one of the highest — and you all know it! Please don't feel so stupid or insecure; it's not your fault."
- “Waterboarding would be fine. If they can expand the laws, I would do a lot more than waterboarding,” Trump said on NBC's “Today” program, adding he believed torture could produce useful leads.
- Trump would not rule out closing Mosques: "Well, I would hate to do it, but it's something that you're going to have to strongly consider because some of the ideas and some of the hatred — the absolute hatred — is coming from these areas"
- This morning (July 5, 2013), Trump added to his portfolio of race-based insults, citing figures provided by Fox News Channel anchor Bill O'Reilly as proof that “the overwhelming amount of violent crime in our major cities is committed by blacks and Hispanics.”
- In September (2015), Trump told CNN, “I believe in clean air, immaculate air, but I don't believe in climate change.”
- “We're going to build the wall, and we're going to stop it. It's going to end,” Trump said at a campaign stop in March (2016), referring to illegal immigration.
- "I think I'm probably wasting the money. But I'm $35 million under budget. Look, I was going to have 35 or 40 million spent by now. I haven't spent anything. I almost feel guilty … I'm leading by, as you all say, a lot. You can take the CBS poll. You can take any poll and I'm winning by a lot. I don't think I need the ads. But I'm doing them. I almost feel guilty."
- "I am your voice", said Trump. "I alone can fix it. I will restore law and order." At the RPC in Cleveland
- “Waterboarding would be fine. If they can expand the laws, I would do a lot more than waterboarding,” Trump said on NBC's “Today” program, adding he believed torture could produce useful leads.
- “This judge is giving us unfair rulings now I saw why. Well I am building a wall and it is a wall between Mexico not another country,” said Trump during an interview about U.S. Federal Judge Gonzalo Curiel.
editorial break
[edit]- Trump responded to a letter from 50 Republican national security officials, published on August 8, which said Trump "lacks the character, values, and experience" to be President. Trump immediately replied saying, "The names on this letter are the ones the American people should look to for answers on why the world is a mess, and we thank them for coming forward so everyone in this country knows who deserves the blame for making the world such a dangerous place."
- "I am who I am. It's me. I don't want to change. Everyone talks about, 'Oh are you going to pivot?' I don't want to pivot. You have to be you. If you start pivoting you are not being honest with people," Trump told local Wisconsin station WKDT in third week of AUG.
- Donald Trump’s strange speaking style, as explained by linguists
He is a Manchurian Candidate
[edit]The idea of Trump summoning enough foresight and restraint to pull off an entire fake presidential campaign is mostly laughable—he can’t apply enough foresight to finish his sentences coherently half the time. Trump no real, deep-held beliefs, not any he upholds consistently, anyway. If Trump is one thing, it’s consistent in his undying grudges and his need to "punch back"..
Mocking the disabled
[edit]Trump also tried to point to a line in a Washington Post article written days after the attacks that said law enforcement authorities detained and questioned some people who were allegedly seen celebrating. But when one of the reporters, Serge Kovaleski, said the article did not validate Trump’s claim, the real estate magnate mocked Kovaleski’s disability. (Kovaleski has a chronic condition that limits his mobility.)
The Khans And Ted's wife
[edit]Trump said he wouldn't change anything about his response to Khizr and Ghazala Khan, the parents of a slain Muslim-American soldier. "I don't regret anything," Trump told Washington, D.C. television station WJLA earlier this month. He pushed back against the couple for taking the stage at the Democratic National Convention and questioning whether Trump know what "sacrifice" meant. "I said nice things about the son and I feel that very strongly, but of course I was hit very hard from the stage and you know it's just one of those things. But no, I don't regret anything." Trump did, however, acknowledge to The New York Times' Maureen Dowd in April that retweeting an unflattering photo of Texas Sen. Ted Cruz's wife, Heidi, was "a mistake." "If I had to do it again, I wouldn't have sent it," Trump said.
Trump on Twitter
[edit]Twitter plays a central role in Trump's campaign. In a recent interview with the Washington Post reporter Philip Rucker, Trump said he didn’t need the media, because he has mastery of social media. “I’m head and shoulders above everybody else,” he said. “I’ve read now 22 million people on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. More than 22 million people. Nobody else is even close.” [http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/08/donald-trump-twitter-iphone-android/495239/ (Note: Trumps staff uses an iPhone. Trump is indeed sending fewer tweets from his personal Android device. He posted an average of 371 tweets per month from JLY15 through DEC16; that average is down to 200 per month in 2016, not counting August. The iPhone’s tweeting has also ticked up substantially.
- Text analysis of Trump’s tweets by David Robinson, a data scientist at the coding site StackOverflow. Robinson tests a well-circulated hypothesis: If a @RealDonaldTrump tweet is marked as being sent from an iPhone, it’s from a staffer. But if it’s sent from an Android phone—Trump’s Samsung Galaxy?—it might be from the candidate himself. Folks have noted that the Android tweets are a bit, uh, Trumpier. Robinsons analysis concludes that the Android and iPhone tweets are clearly from different people, posting during different times of day and using hashtags, links, and retweets in distinct ways. What’s more, we can see that the Android tweets are angrier and more negative (more Trump-ier), while the iPhone tweets tend to be benign announcements and pictures.
More things he said
[edit]The Pope
[edit]POPE FRANCIS said: "A person who thinks only about building walls, wherever they may be, and not of building bridges, is not Christian. This is not the gospel."
- "The big thing, they want to get to the Vatican. So if and when the Vatican is attacked by ISIS, which as everyone knows is ISIS' ultimate trophy, I can promise you that the Pope would have only wished and prayed that Donald Trump would have been president," Trump said Thursday afternoon. "Because this would not have happened. ISIS would have been eradicated, unlike what is happening now with our all-talk, no-action politicians," Trump added.
NY Times
[edit]- Trump said on Twitter that the NY Times was “a newspaper of fiction” that protects Hillary Clinton. He later suggested he would be leading Clinton by 20 percentage points “[i]f the disgusting and corrupt media covered me honestly and didn’t put false meaning into the words I say.”
- Trump also claimed his rallies were being covered improperly by media, who never report “the real message” or show his crowd sizes. “I am not only fighting Crooked Hillary, I am fighting the dishonest and corrupt media and her government protection process. People get it!” Trump declared.
DC Hotel, Zakarian and Jose Andres
[edit]- "If they would have gotten out very quietly I think it would have been better for everybody. They caused me damages," Trump said during the two-hour session at a Washington law office. "They made such a big deal out of it. And they didn't have to....They wanted to be, they thought, politically correct by doing what they did. I think they made a mistake." Trump accused Zakarian and popular D.C. area chef Jose Andres of "grandstanding" when they canceled their planned eateries, claiming they were outraged over Trump's harsh rhetoric on immigration in his presidential announcement speech last year.
Oil
[edit]- TRUMP: "I have long said that we should have kept the oil in Iraq ... In the old days, when we won a war, to the victor belonged the spoils."
- THE FACTS: Trump decries against nation-building, but suggeststhe U.S. should have seized Iraq and its natural resources and turned it into an American colony. Duh! IraQ is a sovereign country.
Obama won't say "radical Islamist terrorists"
[edit]TRUMP: "Anyone who cannot name our enemy is not fit to lead our country. Anyone who cannot condemn the hatred, oppression and violence of radical Islam lacks the moral clarity to serve as our president."
- THE FACTS: Obama doesn't call ISIS "radical Islamic terrorism".
on one of the San Bernardino shooters
[edit]- TRUMP: "She wanted to support very openly jihad online... A neighbor saw suspicious behavior, bombs on the floor and other things, but didn't warn authorities because they said they didn't want to be accused of racial profiling."
- THE FACTS: There is no such evidence. Jarrod Burguan, the city's police chief, says no one reported knowing anything about what husband-and-wife shooters Syed Farook and Tashfeen Malik had been plotting, even after the Dec. 2, 2015, terror attack that killed 14 people at a luncheon for county government employees.
Politician
[edit]He has become a politician. He will say what his constituents want to hear as long as it gets him elected. If he sees a wider audience that can provide more votes, he easily re-states, re-words, re-speaks his old platform into a new "more easy to swallow" one.
He depersonalizes others
[edit]- [http://michaelprescott.freeservers.com/romancing-the-stone-cold.html "...there is a term for a person who has "no organ" by which to understand other human beings -- a person who "can never realize and feel 'other people.'" That word is sociopath. I mean this quite literally and not as a rhetorical flourish. A sociopath, by definition, is someone who lacks empathy and cannot conceive of other people as fully real. It is precisely because the sociopath objectifies and depersonalizes other human beings that he is able to inflict pain, and , in the extreme, death without remorse."
He is one of a kind
[edit]From The Daily Beast: "Hillary Clinton faces a unique challenge when she faces Donald Trump. He is sui generis, one of kind, unlike anyone else who has ever sought the presidency. He has no programs she can attack, only proclamations—a wall will be built, law and order will return, new jobs will appear, terrorism will be defeated—all will be achieved, as if by magic, after he takes the presidential oath. So far, that strategy has succeeded, at least in some Republican circles.
Bengazi mother
[edit]http://www.truthandaction.org/matthews-dont-care-mother-benghazi-victim-felt-shes-liar/2/ “I DON’T CARE” HOW MOTHER OF BENGHAZI VICTIM FELT, SHE’S A LIAR.]
Fairfield COnnecticut event
[edit]- at Sacred Heart University to hear candidate opine on diverse and meandering topics in a state that hasn't voted for a Republican candidate since 1988.
1. Trump threatens to ban the New York Times
- Hardly a rally goes by without Trump bashing the media in some form and on Saturday, he took direct aim at the New York Times for a story he wasn't happy about.
- Trump: "They wrote a story today, 'anonymous sources have said,' three anonymous sources, anonymous this, anonymous that, they don't use names. I don't really think they have any names, okay? But anonymous sources have said. There are no anonymous sources. You know, with my campaign, I'll be honest with you — it's me, it's me. They never called me. They don't call me. But these are the most dishonest people."
- More: "The newspaper's going to hell. They've got a couple of reporters in that newspaper who are so bad with, I mean, lack of talent. But it's going to hell. So I think maybe what we'll do, maybe we'll start thinking about taking their press credentials away from them. ... You know, when they write dishonest stories, you can't read them, there's so much. You can't read them, there's so much. I'd be reading all day long. When they write dishonest stories, we should be a little bit tough, don't we agree?"
- Hardly a rally goes by without Trump bashing the media in some form and on Saturday, he took direct aim at the New York Times for a story he wasn't happy about.
2. Trump is running against the media, not Hillary Clinton
- Trump: "I'm not running against crooked Hillary Clinton. I'm running against the crooked media. That's what I'm running against. It's true. I'm not running against crooked Hillary."
3. Trump makes bid to be agent for Make-A-Wish "wish kid" Trump was joined at the rally by Giacomo Brancado, a young cancer patient whose introduction to the candidate was made possible by the Make-A-Wish foundation.
- Trump: "I was called a month ago by Make-A-Wish. We all know Make-A-Wish, an unbelievable outfit, great, great people, they're great people. And they said there's a young man who wasn't feeling the best and he wanted to meet Donald Trump. Now that's a problem because he's really, really smart but in this case maybe he could've done better, right? But his wish was to meet Donald Trump."
- More: "Giacomo Brancado, 18 years old, he looks like a movie star. I said, Giacomo, you're feeling great, and he's in remission, he is an unbelievable young man, I just was with him backstage. So I want to bring Giacomo up with his family, the Brancado family, and give him a big hand. So I said if I introduce you, Giacomo, with all those cameras — look at those cameras — they're the worst human beings in the world. … But I said if I introduce you with all these cameras, you, with that look, will end up being a movie star."
- Trump added: "Giacomo, I want 10 percent of everything you make."
4. Trump wants cameras out of his rallies
- Trump: "If it were up to me, I'd move those damn cameras the hell out and let the people see properly."
5. Trump concerned he is "depressing" the crowd
- Trump: "The U.S. Department of Education reports Connecticut is expected to have the nation's third fastest decline in students enrolled in high school over the next 10 years, it will probably be number one fairly soon, congratulations, people. Hey! Am I depressing everybody?"
6. Trump attacks Connecticut Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D) for exaggerating about serving in Vietnam
- Trump revived a controversy from the state's 2010 Senate race when Linda McMahon, the GOP nominee in the race, criticized Sen. Richard Blumenthal for exaggerating his military service during the Vietnam War. Trump himself received deferments for that conflict.
- Trump: "She [McMahon] exposed your Senator as being a total fraud. He said he was in Vietnam or wherever, he was supposed to be this great fighting machine, he went around for years saying that he was a great Vietnam fighter, telling false tales, telling everything. Linda exposed him. ... And he got elected? How the hell do you elect a guy like that?"
7. Trump admits he might lie to voters
- Trump: "I might lie to you like Hillary does all the time, but I'll never lie to Giacomo, okay?" (See number 3 above).
8. Trump applauds crowd for braving hot weather - and room
- Trump: "The fact that it's about 190 degrees in this room makes me appreciate the people of Connecticut even more so."
9. It is Trump's opinion (and that of "a lot of people") that Obama is the founder of ISIS. The candidate has said many things in the past several days about President Obama and ISIS. He called Obama the "founder" of ISIS then claimed he was being "sarcastic" with that characterization, then claimed it was "not that sarcastic."
- On Saturday, Trump said: "It's the opinion of myself and a lot of people that he was the founder of ISIS. Because of his weak policies and because he failed, he failed, because he failed to get them out, because he failed to do something about it, and I said, but they wouldn't let that go along, that he is going to be presented over the next short period of time with the MVP Award."
10. He calls CNN "disgusting"
- Trump: "CNN is disgusting and, by the way, their ratings are going down big league, you know why? Because I refused to be interviewed, and I get high ratings, what can I tell you?"
11. Trump says he never kicked a baby out of his rally. Earlier this month, Trump was criticized for telling the mother of a crying infant to "get the baby out of here," before saying he was just joking (and then indicating he wasn't).
- Trump: "The media … they said I threw a baby out. It turned out I didn't throw out a baby. In fact, the mother went on television saying how she loves me. I love that mother." The mother did do the television interview Trump praised — with CNN.
12. Trump brings up Monica Lewinsky's "blue dress". Trump brought back up former President Bill Clinton's affair with Monica Lewinsky while he occupied the Oval Office and told the crowd how thankful he was for the infamous "blue dress."
- Trump: "Remember when he said he did not have sex with that woman? Then a couple of weeks later, 'oh you got me.' Oh, I'm so glad they kept the dress, I'm so glad they kept that dress, alright? It's great. You know why? Because it shows what the hell they are."
13. Trump tells crowd they can't move out of Connecticut.Trump described a tough economy in the state, telling the audience:
- "The good news is you can't move, cause you can't get anything for your house so don't worry about it."
14. Trump won't forgive voters if he loses — but he loves them anyway
- Trump: "Oh you better elect me folks, I'll never speak to you again. Can you imagine — can you imagine how badly I'll feel if I spend all of that money, all of this energy, all of this time, and lost? I will never, ever forgive the people of Connecticut, I will never forgive the people of Florida and Pennsylvania and Ohio. But I love them anyway, we'll see. I think we're gonna do very well."
15. Trump doesn't want their money
- Trump: "We're gonna protect our Second Amendment. We're gonna win so much. What you have to do — don't send me money. What you have to do on November 8th … don't even send me money, I don't want your money! On November 8th, you've got to go to those polls and if you can put in your ballots, put 'em in early."
16. What Trump might say if he loses on November 8th
- Trump: "Folks, I may be wrong — and on November 8th I'll say 'whoop, I guess I was wrong.'"
17. Trump accuses CNN of turning off their cameras. CNN was the "pool" camera for Saturday night's event, meaning that the network supplied the main televised picture to be shared among the networks. While a storm did interrupt the live picture momentarily, it was not by choice.
- Trump: "By the way, you didn't get what I said. But I loved when CNN turned off its camera, as soon as I started telling you what sleaze they are. … Can you imagine having it on live television? But you know the good thing? Nobody is watching them anyways."
18. Trump calls a protester "Hillary" and tells her to "say hello to Bill" as she was escorted out.
- Trump, as protestor is escorted out: "You know, she looks just like Hillary Clinton actually! Is that Hillary? Hillary, is that you?! Hillary wants to find out how you get these crowds, right? How do you get these crowds? And by the way, hi! Say hello to Bill, Hillary!"
19. Trump is OK with GE moving out of Connecticut as long as it's not to another country. General Electric is moving its headquarters from Connecticut to Boston, a huge blow to the state he was speaking in. Trump has promised to stop American companies from moving out of the country, but he told Connecticut voters he's fine with them moving with the borders.
- Trump: "General Electric is moving to Boston, okay? See, that's competition. That's something you gotta fight for yourselves. Okay? It's all the same. But General Electric is moving to Boston. Not even moving to Mexico. Or one of these places where they roll out the red carpet."
Temperament of a 6 year old, 8 year old or ten yr old.
[edit]Which is it?
10 year old “Kellyanne is the new campaign manager. She got the job as part of combat pay,” said one source involved with the discussions. “She’s the candidate manager, which considering how tough it is to manage someone like Donald — who has the temperament of a 12-year-old who always gets what he wants — is a far harder job. So far, it’s working. But it’s only been a few days.” 8 year old 6 year old
The Shake-Up
[edit]- [http://www.politico.com/tipsheets/playbook/2016/08/trump-campaign-shakeup-heavy-emphasis-on-nationalism-and-populism-in-fall-nsa-hacking-tools-revealed-scoop-ford-pitching-dc-on-driverless-new-uchicago-harvard-fellows-bday-ron-bonjean-215911 Wednesday morning...there are 83 days until Election Day, and DT has brought in Breitbart CEO Stephen Bannon to be the new campaign chief executive, and Kellyanne Conway to be the new campaign manager. This is a loss for Paul Manafort, the campaign chairman who has been guiding Trump for months. THE SCOOP -- -- The Wall Street Journal’s Monica Langley got the story from Trump himself. Trump told Langley: “I want to win. That’s why I’m bringing on fantastic people who know how to win and love to win.” Bannon, a former Goldman Sachs banker, has never run any kind of political campaign at ANY level. Conway, a longtime adviser to Mike Pence, worked on Texas Senator Ted Cruz’s super PAC earlier this cycle.
- BOB COSTA of the Washington Post ---- writes that "...the promotion of Conway and the hiring of Bannon represents the “elevating two longtime associates who have encouraged his combative populism.”
- B7 thought; "Hiring Breitbart's editor shows Trumps is inseparable from his biases."
The Mercer Family
[edit]- “Trump’s met in the Hamptons in New York for a Saturday (8/13??) fundraiser at the home of Woody Johnson, owner of the New York Jets … Trump met with mega-donor Rebekah Mercer, the daughter of hedge-fund titan Robert Mercer, (The Mercer family is a prominent investor in Breitbart News as well as in a super PAC opposing Hillary Clinton) about reports that Trump was being advised "...to tame his personality". Trump conferred with Mercer about potential steps he might take to remake his campaign and populate his inner circle with voices that resonated more like his own....voices like Steve Bannon.
Brietbarts stance on stories
[edit]- Brietbart holds Khan's feet to the fire
- ... and sources report Trumps issues what his campaign calls an apology but there are no specifics as to what words he is sorry for. "Sometimes, in the heat of debate and speaking on a multitude of issues, you don't choose the right words or you say the wrong thing. I have done that. And believe it or not, I regret it. And I do regret it, particularly where it may have caused personal pain. Too much is at stake for us to be consumed with these issues," Trump told supporters here. "But one thing I can promise you is this: I will always tell you the truth."
- "Donald Trump literally started his campaign by insulting people. He has continued to do so through each of the 428 days from then until now, without shame or regret," Clinton spokeswoman Christina Reynolds said in a statement. "We learned tonight that his speechwriter and teleprompter knows he has much for which he should apologize. But that apology tonight is simply a well-written phrase until he tells us which of his many offensive, bullying and divisive comments he regrets -- and changes his tune altogether."
- If the 2016 presidential race is tightening, how come the Main Stream Media is acting as though it’s widening? Indeed, why is the MSM 9Main Stream Media0 indicating to us that Hillary Clinton is going to defeat Donald Trump in a landslide? Why are Republicans being told that they should abandon all hope of winning the White House? To answer those questions, we can cite the MSM Rule of Inverse Electoral Correlation: The closer the presidential race gets, the louder the MSM declares that it’s over. And all this comes even as Clinton has had a terrible week—arguably her worst week ever, as the billowing smoke of financial scandal clouds herself and her family.
IF YOU WATCH ONE THING
[edit]- “The Donald Trump ABCs,” by Bloomberg’s Mariama Ndiaye, Matt Negrin, and Matt Soto: “We’ve been watching Donald Trump campaign for more than a year, using a unique language of idioms, expressions, and filler phrases. We call them the Trump ABCs. Here’s the definitive catalog, from A to Z.”
- 7 minute video hottopic://bit.ly/2b8AmVB
Trump is sorry, 8/19
[edit]HE’S SORRY --
- “‘Sometimes, in the heat of debate and speaking on a multitude of issues, you don’t choose the right words or you say the wrong thing,’ Mr. Trump said. ‘I have done that. And believe it or not, I regret it.’ pauses while assembled crowd chants Mr. Trump’s name, which gets a thumbs-up from Donald. ‘And I do regret it, particularly where it may have caused personal pain,’ Mr. Trump added. ‘Too much is at stake for us to be consumed with these issues.’ ...
- echoing a remark he made Tuesday during a speech on law enforcement in West Bend, Wis. ‘What do you have to lose by trying something new? Watch, I will fix it. Watch. You have nothing to lose,’ Trump said. ‘They have been playing with you for 60, 70, 80 years. Many, many decades. You have nothing to lose. I will do a great job.’”
The day after
[edit]Will Trump political machine just disappear? What is likely to happen
- Wall Street Journal deputy editorial page editor Bret Stephens; made a comment about "...those who spend an inordinate amount of time “listening to certain cable shows” and inhaling the conspiracy theories promoted on “certain fringes of the internet,’’ he said, wind up in a debate that’s “divorced from reality.” Reminds me, of some WE.
Snow Rise on "Falsehood"
[edit]“ | The complete lack of necessary context to keep such a statement neutral in any real sense. We're talking about highly politicized topics here; treating each possible case that might be used under the "well, it's sourced..." argument as if they were all instances where truth and falsehood was a clear binary, or areas where reasonable people couldn't disagree does not accurately reflect the complexity of these stories. I agree that aggregating them together to make such a broad and non-contextualized statement as proposed is a form of WP:SYNTHESIS; even to the extent that we have sources suggesting his untrustworthiness in broad terms, there remain significant issues with WP:WEIGHT (and WP:NEUTRALITY broadly in using them as the basis for such a broad and critical language in such a factual way, despite the variety of opinions that exist amongst reliable sources (which, realistically, all the editors who have ever edited this page (or ever will!) can only check a fraction of, leaving our source selection vulnerable to confirmation bias. We simply cannot treat what amounts to a judgement of character as if it were some sort of long-established empirical fact; I join others here who have pointed out that, at the very least, NPOV requires that we say something to the effect that "many of his critiques have claimed that...", and even that has it's issues.
Look, I'm going to be real for a moment here: most Wikipedians are fairly educated individuals, and polling has shown a pretty stark rejection of Trump by those with a high degree of education. Ergo, I take it for a given that a statistically significant number of editors here have a dim view of the man and his positions. Indeed, I'll go further and bring it to point in question here: I think most of us probably view this man as a manipulative and polemic ideologue, willing to say anything to stir people up or otherwise serve his political agenda and, above all, an obsessive need for self-aggrandizement. Additionally, most of us probably have the impression that the man is so simple-minded that he fails to understand when and where he lacks even a basic understanding of topics upon which he often makes divisive, emotional statements. I'm sure there are Trump supporters amongst us, but I'd be surprised if that didn't basically summarize what most of us think of the man. So of course, when there is a wealth of sourcing out there of people saying basically the same thing, or debunking specific statements made by Trump, there is an urge to embrace what we view to be the obvious truth and say "Hey, look, we're just relaying the facts, and we have the sourcing to support it." Or, to put it as people often do in these situations, to say we are just calling a spade for a spade. But Wikipedia's voice is not for stating our own perspectives, no matter how confident we are in them, and I'd argue that the stronger our certainty on a particular topic, the greater our editorial duty to make sure that certitude does not bleed into the language of our encyclopedic prose. We can (and should) raise those instances where the factual veracity of Trump's statements have been challenged, where those challenges have been discussed in reliable sources. We can even discuss those who have criticized Trump's relationship with the truth in broader terms--and again, should, where acceptable sourcing exists. What we cannot do is lend our voice to discuss these stances as unqualifiable and empirical fact. Any statements regarding challenges to Trump's assertions must be clearly attributed and contextualized. And because, in this instance, we can not efficiently do that in the lead, a broad claim that he has a proclivity towards telling falsehoods simply should not be placed there. Those who would like Trump's statements to be treated with the utmost scrutiny (and believe me, I'm amongst them) will just have to be content with the language that his statements are often "controversial" and hope that this is an instance where readers will diligently read research the facts (either here or elsewhere) to gain and a complete understanding of the arguments. And honestly, given the political nature of this topic, and the entrenched opinions people have on the man (one way or the other), I don't think you're going to serve the average reader of this article by calling this man a liar in essentially outright terms. You're either preaching to the choir when you do that or convincing someone towards and adversarial view of the article. I say, lay out the specific facts in the main body of the article and let people utilize their own critical thinking skills to come to their own conclusions. We're much more likely to educate our readers, in the aggregate, with that approach than adopting polemic language, no matter how convinced we are that it reflects reality. |
” |
- TLDR: Encyclopedic tone. User:Snow Rise @ Talk:Donald Trump 04:21, 7 September 2016 (UTC)
A Week of Lies
[edit]- A week of whoppers by DT/NYT
- Scope of Trump's falsehoods unprecedented for a modern presidential candidate/LAT
- Donald Trump’s Week of Misrepresentations, Exaggerations and Half-Truths/POLITICO
- The weekend America's newspapers called Donald Trump a liar/CNN