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[Rolan7]

I "have not seen evidence" that such craven weasel-wording actually excuses a President's official statements.  Trump is telling his base and I guess the country to doubt the alleged Russian assassination.  In context of him being President, he's speaking for our massive intelligence network which reports to him.

I do not know why he would do Putin such a kindness.  I honestly don't, but it sure is a consistent pattern of worrying behavior.

(I wonder, was the greatest exploit of American politics to seldom speak in complete sentences?  It's harder to be fact-checked when you technically say nothing at all.  Not that Trump invented that, but perhaps he perfected it.)

[Frumple]

The shitgibbon hasn't really perfected much of anything. There are ways to purposefully speak in more or less unfalsifiable statements, but that's not really what trump does. His speaking method is mostly just narcissistic grifter + dementia. He says plenty that can be fact checked, he just alternately doesn't give a damn or remember what it was.

[hector13]

The shitgibbon hasn't really perfected much of anything. There are ways to purposefully speak in more or less unfalsifiable statements, but that's not really what trump does. His speaking method is mostly just narcissistic grifter + dementia. He says plenty that can be fact checked, he just alternately doesn't give a damn or remember what it was.

He has perfected it though, presumably over the years of business and “business” he conducted.

He very rarely comes down on one side of something, unless it’s fuck the Dems/Republicans are so great, or to say he never said “that thing you’re criticizing me about.”

This was probably most egregious when he said there were good people on both sides of a Nazi and anti-Nazi protest in Charlottesville, or when he was all “have you guys considered injecting bleach into people, or putting the sun in their lungs?” which was obviously sarcasm, even though he never jokes.

He’s like the personification of post-truth ideology.

[hector13]

Double post but what the fuck Donald.

[Bumber]

This was probably most egregious when he said there were good people on both sides of a Nazi and anti-Nazi protest in Charlottesville

He made it clear within the same interview that he wasn't referring to Nazis:

TRUMP:  ... you had some very bad people in that group, but you also had people that were very fine people, on both sides. You had people in that group ... that were there to protest the taking down of, to them, a very, very important statue and the renaming of a park from Robert E. Lee to another name.

REPORTER:  George Washington and Robert E. Lee are not the same.

TRUMP:  George Washington was a slave owner. So will George Washington now lose his status? Are we going to take down statues to George Washington? How about Thomas Jefferson? What do you think of Thomas Jefferson? You like him?

REPORTER:  I do love Thomas Jefferson.

TRUMP:  Okay, good. Are we going to take down the statue? Because he was a major slave owner. Now, are we going to take down his statue? So you know what, it’s fine. You’re changing history. You’re changing culture. And you had people—and I’m not talking about the neo-Nazis and the white nationalists, because they should be condemned totally—but you had many people in that group other than neo-Nazis and white nationalists.

You've got the rare actual condemnation of neo-Nazis and white nationalists here.

[wierd]

The shitgibbon hasn't really perfected much of anything. There are ways to purposefully speak in more or less unfalsifiable statements, but that's not really what trump does. His speaking method is mostly just narcissistic grifter + dementia. He says plenty that can be fact checked, he just alternately doesn't give a damn or remember what it was.

Dealing with dementia every day, I can tell you straight up, if the president does have dementia, it is a mild case. (early stages.)

Mostly, he just has the attention span of a gnat, and about as much tact and candor. (I think the gnat might have him beat on the last two.)

People with dementia do not purposefully tell falsehoods.  What they say is instead "simply untrue."  Trump?  Those are straight up falsehoods.  He knows what he is doing, and does it anyway. 

Now, Biden?  That man acts like early to mid stages of dementia, given the many kinds of slips he's made giving speeches, and interacting with crowds.  He has very good "Muscle memory" for statecraft, but he is covering for deficits.


The orange moron is just a common variety doofus, with delusions of grandeur, and a trust fund that would be better used on somebody else, who is a serial liar, and a trained sociopath. (Trained; His sister's book explains pretty well.)

[Doomblade187]

The whole thing about Trump being a nazi friendly guy doesn't just come from Charlottesville, Bumber. That quote is commonly misreported, yes, but he's expressed support for right wing militias as recently as the shooting in Kenosha.
Even if he doesn't like outright nazis, the fact that so many of the people he supports, appoints, and listens to are half a step away from being an outright Nazi is what generates the comparison.

[BoujeeTheAlan]

I feel Trump's primary issue with Nazis is the implicit implication that he's a discount Hitler. If the only language we had was to simply call them Trumpists he'd be throwing them golfing parties in celebration of his "one of a kind" brand of evil.

[Starver]

There are ways to purposefully speak in more or less unfalsifiable statements,

Cross-subject/cross-ocean example of this:

When being challenged about the systems for booking drive-through Covid-testing[1], the answer was that "a vast majority of people could access a local test or request a postal test kit".  Given that postal tests kits are (supposedly, but for the purposes of this statement might as well be) available to everyone, this requires no such asurance on the other bit of the 'or' branch of truth for the compound answer to be considered true. If anybody really wanted to later press them on this one pointless statement, they just point out that they were correct insofar as scoring a goal within the goalposts that they had moved within the answer itself.

I sometimes wish that live interviewers could see (or react, if they already do see) more readily to these little tricks. Easy to spot when listening to the radio, of course, but if you've got producers in your ear shouting that the time-pips are two minutes away and there's a minute of audio package needs to be fit in in-between thanking the interviewee and announcing the programme's end... Well, probably not something I could do, even without the critical thinking part.


[1] The Algorithm sent some people across nearly half the country[2] to a testing-station, past numerous other nearer ones that are nowhere near over-used.

[2] Small as it is, but still sometimes a couple of hundred miles, and described to the end-user as crow-flies distance  though some trips (Cornwall to Wales) have hefty diversions[3].

[3] Really, a government system that doesn't tap into at least Ordnance Survey routefinding data seems almost like a designed-in oversight...

[anewaname]

The draft was used in the US for Vietnam under the Universal Military Training and Service Act. The US Army casualties in Vietnam were 50% draftees and 50% volunteers. The other military branches had a lower draftee casualty % but this was partly because of an option where if you volunteered before being drafted then you were allowed to select your military branch. The people who took this option usually avoided the Army and were labeled as volunteers under non-Army branches. So the non-Army branches had a lower draftee casualty rate. The majority of draftees served in Vietnam, while many volunteers served elsewhere. You could look at the numbers differently and say that only about 1 out of 7 of the active military at the time had been drafted, but when that 1 in 7 is sent to the combat locales, they'll die at a higher rate.

The American's "Vietnam war" was just the last 10 years out of 100 years of war for Vietnam. The French began the militarized conquest of Vietnam about 1850 and by 1890 the land was completely French controlled. The French used Vietnam as a southern hemisphere plantation. They introduced an education system so the Vietnamese would speak French. Educated Vietnamese formed rebellious groups; they were "nationalists" not "communists". They wanted better civil rights and self-governance. Some of them may have been saying "no taxation without representation!". They openly rebelled in 1930 and were beaten back into an underground movement. The American Revolutionary War would have ended the same way if European nations didn't foil the British plans. Japan occupied Vietnam during World War II from 1940 to 1945; they controlled the French governing body instead of removing it. In 1945 the Allies took Vietnam from Japan and gave it back to France. Search the internet for the key words "truman" "letter" "ho chi min" and check the available images. You can read the declassified letters sent from Ho Chi Min to the USA, requesting help in obtaining Vietnam independence from the French. Apparently there was a "Vietnam Democratic Republic" in 1946, though I don't how democratic it was... But Vietnam continued their struggle another 20 years against the French before America sent military troops there. America was only involved in the last 10 years of a struggle for self-governance.

My laugh at this is that when WW II was ending, the USA said "Our people are tired of coffee rationing", the UK "We miss our tea", and France said "give us back Vietnam and you'll get good deals on coffee and tea, and if those guys in South America try to raise their export prices, we will undercut them to keep the import prices low for you." And, if Truman was a little snappier when he looked at the letter he received from Ho Chi Min, he might have sent a letter to the French... "Now that your country has worn the shackles of an oppressive controlling foreign power and been released from those shackles, might you release Vietnam from your grip?"

No one wants to hear about people that were drafted and died in some war for the profit of someone else's family business, so I will quiet down about this now.

[Reelya]

Obviously it's going to be big news for a while
https://www.news.com.au/finance/work/leaders/generals-slam-donald-trump-over-report-he-called-fallen-soldiers-losers/news-story/eeb1d070a6b125259af40ad4c992fe2e

He was largely having a go at The Atlantic’s four sources, who claimed to have “first-hand knowledge” of the President’s comments, but were not named by the article’s author, Jeffrey Goldberg.

It is important to stress that point – so far, nobody has put their name to these claims.

However, shortly after the article was published, AP investigative reporter James LaPorta said he had confirmed it “in its entirety” with an anonymous “senior Defence Department” official.

And The Washington Post later confirmed, again with an anonymous “senior administration official”, that “the President frequently made disparaging comments about veterans and soldiers missing in action, referring to them at times as ‘losers’”.

So for the fallen WWI soldiers are losers claim, which Trump denies, we have the Atlantic as well as AP and Washington Post all claiming they've been in contact with primary sources who back up the claims.

Whether or not this affects his supporters, he's pissed off a lot of people in the army who appear to believe it too.

[Loud Whispers]

I feel Trump's primary issue with Nazis is the implicit implication that he's a discount Hitler. If the only language we had was to simply call them Trumpists he'd be throwing them golfing parties in celebration of his "one of a kind" brand of evil.

Hitler lost WWII which makes him a LOSER but Trump is a WINNER because he only WINS, which makes him at least 2 hitlers

[MrRoboto75]

I feel Trump's primary issue with Nazis is the implicit implication that he's a discount Hitler. If the only language we had was to simply call them Trumpists he'd be throwing them golfing parties in celebration of his "one of a kind" brand of evil.

Hitler lost WWII which makes him a LOSER but Trump is a WINNER because he only WINS, which makes him at least 2 hitlers

A hitler in the bunker is worth two in the white house.

[JoshuaFH]

I wonder what would have happened had Hitler won WW2. Fascism might have played out and failed on its own merits as opposed to simply being beaten into the ground, inoculating the entire world against that brand of stupidity forever.

Though, now that I think about it, WW2 probably would have never ended if the Allies didn't win, fascism seems to require enemies to exist, and so the Nazis would have simply gone on to continue fighting the rest of the world, and then eachother, and then themselves, until nobody was left.

[ChairmanPoo]

I wonder what would have happened had Hitler won WW2. Fascism might have played out and failed on its own merits as opposed to simply being beaten into the ground, inoculating the entire world against that brand of stupidity forever.

Though, now that I think about it, WW2 probably would have never ended if the Allies didn't win, fascism seems to require enemies to exist, and so the Nazis would have simply gone on to continue fighting the rest of the world, and then eachother, and then themselves, until nobody was left.

I assume you mean a "realistic" nazi victory Fatherland style, not the kookier variants like in the later wolfenstein.

They'd have concealed their own crimes. Eventually moved into a more conventional pragmatical economy, finlandized most neighbours. Nationalist posturing for decades. Eventually political opening, but with regime-parties still having a significant presence and often winning elections, with "proper" fascists remaining more or less fringe.

 In short, about one or two decades of pure nazi chaos at worst, and then a return to the mean under an authoritarian dictatorship, and likely an authoritarian democracy after that.