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Comment by tetrometal | Hacker News Reader

This is such a blatantly false framing that it's impossible for me to believe you're presenting it in good faith.

I don't understand your position here at all. Trump is currently doing everything he can to thwart a peaceful transition of power. The fact that he is such an ineffectual buffoon is the only reason he is not succeeding.

For me, Trump trying to use the Justice Dept to investigate his enemies and thwart investigations of his friends is so beyond the pale, way beyond what any president, Republican or Democrat, has ever done that I am shocked people can think this was not a big deal. I mean, that extreme abuse of power is banana republic, end of Rome-type shit.

Put it another way: I firmly believe if a time traveler from, say, 2010 just showed up to see Trump's autocratic desires that they'd be horrified; we've just gotten used to Trump's extreme abuses. Heck, it's become something of a new favorite pastime of mine to look at Trump's own tweet storms circa 2012 and see how 2012 Trump would be condemning 2020 Trump in the harshest possible terms.

> This is such a blatantly false framing that it's impossible for me to believe you're presenting it in good faith.

Listen to his responses again. I don't know how you can interpret it any other way.

September 2020: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oR8oIitE6mI

October 2016: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cP0G4vJ5OMw

Edit: Found a September 2016 one where he does say he will support the transfer of power - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XRJ8TLCZdnI

I am very interested in seeing a “good faith” framing of his statements on the topic from you. Can you provide one?

Not GP commenter, but here's one: The "will you support a peaceful transition of power" question is designed to elicit a response which could be quoted out of context in an article inevitably headlined "Trump predicts his own election defeat; already musing about transfer of power to his Democratic challenger". For any politician to answer a question posed this way would be disaster. Trump's unique problem is that he simply refuses to answer the question rather than giving a non-answer with the appearance of substance. Whether this is by choice or because he can't pull off that common trick is perhaps debatable.

(Before downvoting/flagging, please recognize that this answer is not exclusive of other explanations such as "Trump really does have dictatorial ambitions". I take no position on such non-falsifiable claims.)

This is very similar to George W Bush's "fool me twice... I won't get fooled again" gaffe. Had he completed the quote properly he could never have escaped the clips of saying "shame on me" taken out of context (remember this is before the days of deepfakes; now it would matter much less). This was predictably spun as "Dubya is stupid!" but frankly to recognize mid-quip the minefield he was about to step in is a feat beyond the average person. Of course the difference is (again) that unlike Bush, Trump really leaves open the possibility that he really is incompetent as opposed to the 5-dimensional chess that anyone supporting him really hopes he's playing.

The only reason he was asked this question in the first place is because there was good reason to doubt that he would support a peaceful transition - doubt that is well founded as we now see.

Maybe hes smart enough not to answer the question - the problem is that it should never have needed to be asked.

> The "will you support a peaceful transition of power" question is designed to elicit a response which could be quoted out of context in an article inevitably headlined "Trump predicts his own election defeat

Then why wasn't Biden asked the same question? Or anyone else? If this was just a gaffe factory then surely it would be a staple of the presidential interview genre, no?

But it's not. Only Trump got asked that. Ever, as far as I know. And the reason isn't because we were looking for a gaffe but because there was (AND REMAINS!) significant doubt as to whether he would support a peaceful transition of power.

I mean, the current circumstances right now disprove the theory you just proposed. Read his twitter feed, for goodness sake.

> Then why wasn't Biden asked the same question? Or anyone else? If this was just a gaffe factory then surely it would be a staple of the presidential interview genre, no?

That doesn't even make sense! Biden isn't the sitting POTUS. The question "will you support a peaceful transition of power" only makes sense when asked of a sitting POTUS, not an incoming POTUS. Biden doesn't currently have any power which he's required to transmit to Trump!

I know TDS can be a powerful effect, but surely you're not asking me to believe (or to take seriously) that there's someone else other than Trump who currently holds the position of POTUS.

Just today: the president has begun purging the defense department, the attorney general has rolled back rules about interference in in-progress elections, and the majority leader has signaled support for overturning the election.

Would you care to revisit your priors as to whether or not it was appropriate to ask Trump about his support for a peaceful transfer of power?

It's pretty much the standard interpretation.

https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/09/24/trump-transition-us-ele...

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