Comment by smsm42 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by smsm42 | Hacker News Reader

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> he famously called it a hoax

He did not. If you read it in some news article, please do yourself a favor and do not use this news source anymore. If somebody of your friends told you that, please keep loving them as friends but accept anything they say with a grain of salt as they may be more gullible than you thought.

What Trump actually said is that his opponents suggestion that he doesn't do enough to counter the epidemic is the next hoax (previous one obviously being, in his opinion, the impeachment proceedings). This is somewhat unusual application of word "hoax", as "hoax" usually refers to false statement of fact, and whether Trump is doing a good job is not a fact but an opinion, which you can disagree with but it can't be "hoax". What he obviously meant is that his opponents unjustifiedly accuse him of doing poor job, and he expressed it in the usual Trumpian manner, sacrificing precision for expressiveness. What he didn't ever say is that the epidemic itself is a "hoax" and everybody that told you he did, unfortunately, lied to you, either knowingly (because they hate Trump and think it's ok to sacrifice the truth for the noble goal of getting rid of Trump, somehow thinking when they do it, as opposed to Trump doing it, it's ok) or unknowingly (being deceived by the former kind).

This is one of the examples of how tribal things are. All Trump says is available in transcripts. Not many - especially from the opposing tribe - bother to read them and actually know what he says before forming (or, rather, confirming the pre-existing) opinion on the matter.

You can get the words e.g. here: https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/trump-coronavirus-rally-re... - I choose a source that is not in Trump's tribe so that there was no doubt their conclusion that Trump didn't say coronavirus is a hoax is not tribally motivated.

I see. It feels quite funny though to be so specific about the ramblings of a man, who clearly says whatever comes to his mind without further thought. He might as well have said it and nothing would change. Definitely though there is a difference, and I should have probably worded myself a little differently. But it's quite hard to adhere to a high level of truthfulness when the other side clearly has no regard for it.

And just to be clear: I'm not very biased person to either sides, and I think it's amusing to see Americans get so riled by their opposing political side. I treat all of the US media to be biased in some direction, and never to reach the level of objectivity I myself would enjoy. It would be nice though that they would, I agree, but this is the reality of the current world I guess. If I could decide, I would just break apart the whole two-party system and give people actual options in voting. Perhaps then at least those who can think for themselves could vote for a candidate they believed in, instead of just voting the "least-worst" candidate.

> It feels quite funny though to be so specific about the ramblings of a man,

He either said it's a hoax or he didn't. In this case, he didn't. If you don't care what he rambles about, that's fine, but then don't say he said something he didn't as a proof to some point, as if it were a well-known fact.

> He might as well have said it and nothing would change

But he did not. So don't say he did. It's a lie. It's not ok for Trump to lie, why it's ok for somebody else to lie about Trump?

> But it's quite hard to adhere to a high level of truthfulness when the other side clearly has no regard for it.

So far the side that says the facts don't actually matter and whether he said what you claim he said or not is immaterial seems to be you. I think allowing yourself to disregard the truth because "the other side is doing it anyway" is not a right way to do things.

Well I just noted your reply, 2 days later, but I'll still reply just because I feel annoyed.

Oh please, you are fighting windmills here. How I was phrasing myself in my opinion was vague enough to let the reader know, that I was not really sharing scientifically exact information. I expected somebody to write a short reply to correct me had I been wrong, not get so worked up on this.

Eg "If somebody of your friends told you that, please keep loving them as friends but accept anything they say with a grain of salt as they may be more gullible than you thought." What? I think you have overdosed on political zealousness as that's not something I would really care about. But perhaps as a European it's impossible for me to understand. And if I did care enough to correct them, I could just tell them and they wouldn't get upset. Unless you do it a like a nit-picking asshole that is.

It's nice you are trying the right the wrong, but seriously a less passive-aggressive reply would have been enough. Bless your heart.

> How I was phrasing myself in my opinion was vague enough to let the reader know, that I was not really sharing scientifically exact information.

You were not sharing scientific information. The problem is not that your information was unscientific, it's that it was a lie. And instead of saying "well, sorry, my bad, I goofed up, should have checked my sources better, will do better in the future" you still are trying to prove it's somehow OK to tell untruth and I was unreasonable ("a nit-picking asshole") for calling you out on telling a falsity, and somehow now me "getting worked up" (you must be really psychic knowing that via the internet! maybe you should make billions betting on stocks instead?) is the problem, not telling false things. I don't think this has much to do with being a European. I myself have been born in Europe, and I have many European friends, and I know in Europe truth means the same as everywhere else in the world.

Here's the quote from the Snopes article:

> Now the Democrats are politicizing the coronavirus. You know that, right? Coronavirus. They’re politicizing it. We did one of the great jobs. You say, ‘How’s President Trump doing?’ They go, ‘Oh, not good, not good.’ They have no clue. They don’t have any clue. They can’t even count their votes in Iowa, they can’t even count. No they can’t. They can’t count their votes.

> One of my people came up to me and said, ‘Mr. President, they tried to beat you on Russia, Russia, Russia. That didn’t work out too well. They couldn’t do it. They tried the impeachment hoax. That was on a perfect conversation. They tried anything, they tried it over and over, they’ve been doing it since you got in. It’s all turning, they lost, it’s all turning. Think of it. Think of it. And this is their new hoax. But you know, we did something that’s been pretty amazing. We’re 15 people [cases of coronavirus infection] in this massive country. And because of the fact that we went early, we went early, we could have had a lot more than that.

Here is what you extracted from the quote: - "What Trump actually said is that his opponents suggestion that he doesn't do enough to counter the epidemic is the next hoax"

But you condition this statement on a novel understanding of the word "hoax"

"This is somewhat unusual application of word "hoax", as "hoax" usually refers to false statement of fact, and whether Trump is doing a good job is not a fact but an opinion, which you can disagree with but it can't be "hoax"."

Of course, you spotted right away that he was "sacrificing precision for expressiveness."

To steelman the other side: given the unreliability of natural language, there is a tendency to construct your own interpretation and then work backwards, which I think you did there. in the quotation, he uses "hoax" to describe another event:

>They tried the impeachment hoax. That was on a perfect conversation.

versus

> And this is their new hoax. But you know, we did something that’s been pretty amazing. We’re 15 people in this massive country. And because of the fact that we went early, we went early, we could have had a lot more than that.

Given the structural similarity and proximity of these two quotes, it seems clear what Trump is trying to do is to compare to these two instances and the similarity of the response from the Dems. In both, he very clearly says that his conversation with the Ukrainian President and the Coronavirus situation are both similarly germane. At the very least, it should be beyond question that Trump is downplaying the severity of the coronavirus in the last few sentences. It follows that the "hoax" is referring to the opposition party making a mountain out of molehill.

But I digress. The most important thing is that you have strong opinions on tribal politics and an apparent distrust of media. Which is fine and good! But it is also important to recognize that your interpretation could be different from someone else's, and that doesn't mean that they lied "because they hate Trump and think it's ok to sacrifice the truth for the noble goal of getting rid of Trump, somehow thinking when they do it, as opposed to Trump doing it, it's ok". You cannot assume all statements contrary to your own are made in bad faith.

> it should be beyond question that Trump is downplaying the severity of the coronavirus in the last few sentences.

He may have downplayed the severity, but it's light years away from claiming it's a "hoax". One can reasonably debate whether he did the former, but the latter is flat out lie. It's not ok to lie, even about Trump. There's a huge difference between choosing how to react to coronavirus (a lot of people were unsure initially how severe it is) and flatly denying it is happening. It's OK to argue that Trump was wrong on his chosen reaction, but it's not ok to lie that he called it a "hoax".

> It follows that the "hoax" is referring to the opposition party making a mountain out of molehill.

The "hoax" was about the claim that he did poor job handling the coronavirus. He thinks he did great job and his opponents are wrong. Not about that coronavirus epidemics doesn't exist.

> Which is fine and good!

What is not fine and not good is that people are ok with lying as long as it hurts the other tribe and helps theirs. Not ok at all. It's not a matter of "interpretation", it's a matter of twisting facts to the point where it becomes outright falsity.

You literally made a new definition of "hoax" on the fly to fit your truth model. You steamrolled over a contradiction in your logic and then go accusing people of lying for not doing the same!

Lets go directly to polifact then:

https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2020/mar/17/instagram-...

"The video makes it seem like Trump is calling the disease itself a hoax, which he hasn’t done. The words are Trump’s, but the editing is Biden’s."

"Trump’s comments feed into a conspiracy theory that claims Democrats and the media are fabricating the threat of COVID-19 to hurt the economy and, by extension, the president’s re-election chances. And the president appeared to downplay the threat of the virus at several points in recent weeks.

But the Biden campaign’s ad is misleading. It’s an example of what the Washington Post calls "splicing," or "editing together disparate videos" that "fundamentally alters the story that is being told."

What does a factcheck of spliced Biden campaign video have to do with the issue at hand? The quotes I pulled were directly from the transcript.

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