TS, 2-6 are mostly or completely editorial decisions that are irrelevant to whether news is “fake” or whether the media is “lying.”

The only possible exception would be selectively reporting and omitting facts in a way that makes the overall story misleading.

Is your position that Project Veritas is mostly editing for content? Or is it that they occasionally have taken editorial decisions that raise questions about individual clips?

Some might suspend their reality and feel there is justification for pretending to believe it (adios?). Others like TS use it in bad faith, which is why you're unlikely to get an answer.

Bair was very sensitive to Bernie's attacks on Fox at the town hall, raw nerved. He might know his network is bull****, but if so, continuing to work there is possibly more concerning than being just another charismatic rube.

Or maybe if fox is gracious enough to give you an hour of air time be gracious and answer the ****ing questions rather than bash the network that is voluntarily giving you 1 hour free airtime

Wow, that was generous of them. I had no idea they kept none of the profit.

I don't watch Fox but it's worth pointing out the hour or two of relatively objective news hour to give the appearance of objectivity is a well known trait of propaganda outlets.

More broadly, it is basically an accepted truism that most effective propaganda outlets tell the truth (or at least unfalsifiable claims) as much as possible.

This is a paper from the 1950s examining Nazi propaganda:
https://academic.oup.com/poq/article/14/3/419/1832014

"Truth, he thought, should be used as
frequently as possible; otherwise the enemy or the facts themselves
might expose falsehood, and the credibility of his own output would
suffer. "

There are social dimensions to definitions of "truth" (depending on audience) and how it could be "used."

The hour or so relatively objective news output is to give otherwise still thinking conservatives an excuse to inundate themselves with "commentary" that even they know is filled with lies and twisted half-truths.

TS, since we are on the topic of Trump's relationship with the media, what do you make of reports that Trump in his younger days frequently called the media and pretended to be his own publicist for the purpose of bragging about what a great person/businessman/boss/cocksman he was? Which of the answers below most closely reflects your view?

[ ] -- I believe the president when he says that he never did such a thing.

[ ] -- I have no idea whether to believe the president when he says he never did such a thing.

[ ] -- I believe the numerous reporters who claim to have received such calls (or claim that Trump admitted to them that he made such calls), and by extension I believe the president's denial is a lie, but I think it's all good, clean fun.

[ ] -- I believe the reports, and by extension I believe the president's denial is a lie. This is all consistent with a larger pattern of disturbingly narcissistic behavior by the president.

Clearly two of the defining events of the 21st century.

Also CNN ran with Smollet after he was exposed as lying for like a week. We were bitching about it in politics. They just want eyeballs. Your strawman is completely invalid.

And I went to CNN like 4 hours after the Covington story broke. They had a completely accurate take on what happened. The part you don't get is many of us still react viscerally to that smug kid and that group of MAGA hat-wearing teens whooping it up on the National Mall - whether or not the Native American walked up to them or not is mostly irrelevant.

The "CNN is fake news!" crowd seems to have this dynamic where you don't like how a story is covered so you immediately assume fake news until you've forgotten any details about what was fake or even who reported it. Yes some news outlets initially incorrectly stated that the kids confronted the Native American guy, not the other way around. But CNN wasn't one of them. And even the ones that did it was quickly corrected most of the time.

And of course the great cherry on top is the endless stream of stuff like that coming out of FoxNews that you fully support - sometimes with corrections - sometimes they don't even bother

To be clear, by "denial", I am referring to Trump's statements in May 2016 on NBC's Today, which are quoted in the Politico article linked below.

https://www.politico.com/story/2016/...okesman-223158

I don't recall all of the details, but for example in The Hill article TS linked, there is this quote:

You can find some reporting of O'Keefe's prior work here also:

Basically there's a long history here which warrants pretty extreme skepticism.

From the Wikipedia article on O'Keefe:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_O%27Keefe

C

IMO this is an example of that entire story being a Rorschach test where people see what they want to see. Take away the MAGA hats and I see a bunch of dumb high school kids acting stupid in public, pretty much like any dumb high school kids anywhere. "Smug kid" looked like a typical skinny nerd who had no idea how to react, so he decided to try to look tough in front of his friends by staring the guy down who got in his face.

Take away the MAGA hats and it's probably not even a news story. No one got hurt or physically assaulted. "High school kid looks smug" is not really newsworthy... but he liked Trump, now we are all free to hate the smug little bastard!

All of the prime time cable shows are biased commentators. All of them

Everybody seems to conveniently miss the tomahawk chopping and "inidian chanting" in the face of a group of native americans.

Trump hats or not, if that video gets out like that, I think more than just "idiots kids will be idiot kids" I think "what a racist bunch of little ****s. Their parents ****ed up big time or are super racist for them to think this is ok."

Somewhere between C & D. He clearly did this, it's obviously good clean fun, and it also indicates a narcissism inherent in many good self promoters. Trump clearly has a number of narcissistic tendencies to the point of it affecting optimal functioning. None of that precludes a big heart, a good brain, brilliant business savvy, effectiveness, or anything else. It's just a wart he has.

I also believe he groped/uninvited kissed the women that came forward he claimed he did, although not all of them (lots of women provably lie about this in high profile cases).

Here's my view on Trump since you're asking:

- Clearly a pig/playboy/rich chauvinist, although with a soft spot and manners
- Clearly quite narcissistic, although not to a level I'd call a serious pathology. He's not that different to any normal successful businessman/negotiator from his era. It comes with the territory
- Extremely high interpersonal intelligence. Multiple levels above Clinton
- Extremely shrewd business/strategic mind. Gets the right answers to complex, data overload tough questions that involve strategy. A deep wisdom here that most can't see.
- Low verbal intelligence for someone of his stature.
- Impulsive/decisive but with powerful deep well-honed restraints and caution. Which is why people were going hysterical about him pressing the nuke button when he was elected; they see the first but not the second.
- Not highly intellectually curious; merely average and far below average compared to the average modern politician, which is why he comes across as an anachronism among other politicians, and why he seems unintelligent to people who are themselves unintelligent/unworldly.
- A big heart and not at all racist, but also a product of his generation and believes that Western culture is superior to all others (which it is, but only because the West is the only culture to ever reach the Enlightenment in philosophy).
- The experience of decades of being a high level businessman makes him very good at listening to people and understanding.

I think that's a reasonable take on his personality and mind.

I suspect that your response is typical of a lot of Trump supporters. You know in your gut that he is not telling the truth a lot of the time, but you just don't care.

And if Trump characterized news articles that accurately described his efforts to impersonate his own publicist as "fake news" or "a lie", would that also be good, clean fun in your view?

TS, can you elaborate on him being "not at all racist" in light of his many racist statements and actions?

How, specifically, was the Smollett reporting inaccurate?

To me, racism is the value judgment that other races are inherently inferior purely by virtue of their membership of a race, and/or should be treated differently on the basis of race rather than as individuals. All other definitions are pure bull****.

By the definition above, held by most reasonable left wing people before the modern SJW movement began, Trump is not racist.

Since you claim he has made "many racist statements and actions", I will ask you to list three. Should be simple for you given "many".

I'll ask you the same question. If Trump characterized news articles that accurately described his efforts to impersonate his own publicist as "fake news" or "a lie", would that also be good, clean fun in your view?

I guess there is no way to test the proposition in bold, but it is very inconsistent with (i) my personal experience; and (ii) Trump's reputation in the legal community, as measured against his peers.

This seems mostly at odds with your statement that you came to support him in part because you watched several videos that showed his intellectualism.

Trump is rarely described as a good listener, even by those who like him. He is more often described as having a maddeningly short attention span. (FWIW, I have heard the same complaint about Biden.)

So you are looking into his heart to see he is not racist. I find that a bit too convenient.

1. 1973: The US Department of Justice — under the Nixon administration, out of all administrations — sued the Trump Management Corporation for violating the Fair Housing Act. Federal officials found evidence that Trump had refused to rent to black tenants and lied to black applicants about whether apartments were available, among other accusations. Trump said the federal government was trying to get him to rent to welfare recipients. In the aftermath, he signed an agreement in 1975 agreeing not to discriminate to renters of color without admitting to discriminating before.
2. 1989: In a controversial case that’s been characterized as a modern-day lynching, four black teenagers and one Latino teenager — the “Central Park Five” — were accused of attacking and raping a jogger in New York City. Trump immediately took charge in the case, running an ad in local papers demanding, “BRING BACK THE DEATH PENALTY. BRING BACK OUR POLICE!” The teens’ convictions were later vacated after they spent seven to 13 years in prison, and the city paid $41 million in a settlement to the teens. But Trump in October 2016 said he still believes they’re guilty, despite the DNA evidence to the contrary.
3. 1992: The Trump Plaza Hotel and Casino had to pay a $200,000 fine because it transferred black and women dealers off tables to accommodate a big-time gambler’s prejudices.
4. 2011: Trump played a big role in pushing false rumors that Obama — the country’s first black president — was not born in the US. He even sent investigators to Hawaii to look into Obama’s birth certificate. Obama later released his birth certificate, calling Trump a ”carnival barker.” (The research has found a strong correlation between “birtherism,” as this conspiracy theory is called, and racism.) Trump has reportedly continued pushing this conspiracy theory in private.

www.vox.com/2016/7/25/12270880/donald-trump-racist-racism-history

This is a good start. I'll add another. He stated that the judge in the Trump University case was biased and had a conflict of interest. His evidence? The judge was of Mexican descent.

Paul Ryan described this statement as "sort of like the textbook definition of a racist comment."

It is truly confounding why non-racists like Trump and Ron Paul are so beloved by racists.