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Comment by IgorPartola | Hacker News Reader

You are confusing anti-Trump bias with telling the truth. Trump being a pathological liar means that any given story about him will sound bad. Example: “Trump said today he is still under audit and unable to release his tax returns. Of course there is zero reason why being under audit would prevent someone from releasing their tax returns and the most likely explanation is that there is evidence of tax fraud that can be uncovered if his tax returns became public.” This is what happens why you are a public figure who lies: it makes you look bad. The solution isn’t to blame the reporters but to stop lying.

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Okay, sure, Trump misrepresented that maybe -- although his tax returns are typical of someone with lots of depreciable real estate, and don't have much evidence of fraud.

But let's talk about other so-called trump 'lies'. What about the continued doubts by the NYT that there would soon be news about a working coronavirus vaccine at the end of October, early November? What about the Steele Dossier that is now known to have been paid for by Russia (which Trump said at the beginning, but was claimed to be a lie)? What about the forced firing via threat of withholding aide of the Ukrainian prosecutor by Joe Biden, who denied being involved with his son's business dealings in the Ukraine? We were told that was lies, but there is indisputable DKIM evidence that an e-mail from Burisima to Hunter Biden thanked him for meeting his father while he was in office (https://github.com/robertdavidgraham/hunter-dkim). Are those lies too?

Sure Trump lies, like any other politician. But sometimes he tells the truth, and the truth is so ludicrous, that it seems like lies, but when it finally comes out that it was true, we all sit and say to ourselves... maybe we should believe the guy. But I mean... continue on with the denial, you'll just turn more formerly anti-Trump people into pro-Trumpers.

Do I really need to point you towards the Trump lie tracker? I am only exaggerating a little when I say that if he says ten words, he emits 11 lies.

Nice dodge of the question! I cited specific examples of ludicrous things he's said that have come true, and you cite small lies he's told. I can do the same for any politician you name, that doesn't mean they never say something worth listening to.

Like I said though... Keep going. People like you have converted me from a never Trumper to a Trump supporter. And people like you have converted my aunt, a former Obama-supporting liberal, into avid pro-Trumpers. Honestly, from my perspective, I say keep going on and do whatever it is you do. It'll just make more people like me.

> People like you have converted me from a never Trumper to a Trump supporter.

It’s not my job to think for you. And are you really trying to use reverse psychology to get me to argue with you? You are spewing conspiracy theories straight out of 4chan and Trump’s Twitter feed. You have lived under Trump for almost four years and you still support him? And I’m supposed to attempt to convert you back? No thanks, I have better things to do than to argue with people who refuse to look at look at reality unless it’s through the walls of their conspiracy theory bubble. Best of luck to you and your aunt. I hope you find some inner peace. I suspect that if Internet comments bother you enough to switch political affiliations that you need some of it.

> It’s not my job to think for you.

This should be the modus operandi of most internet discussions. Well said.

> I cited specific examples of ludicrous things he's said that have come true, and you cite small lies he's told.

So your defense of “Trump lies constantly” is “not absolutely every thing he says is a lie”, which is true, but man, that’s a really weak defense. Congrats, you set the bar low enough that he can get over it, but maybe having to set that bar so low is a problem.

The implication of working coronavirus vaccine by end of October was that it would be available for use (you can find quotes from the Trump administration saying they were working on distribution of hundreds of millions of doses by the end of the month), not that there would be a preliminary report from a still ongoing trial indicating that the vaccine works.

The Steele dossier includes information from Russian sources. It was not "paid for" by Russia.

No one has argued that Hunter Biden was not being paid because he was a Biden. The question was whether it led to improper behavior on the part of Joe Biden. That email proves nothing. It's entirely plausible that Hunter Biden got this guy an invite to some social function where shook hands with the Vice President. This is also entirely ignoring the fact that the firing of the prosecutor wasn't some sort of one off idea that Biden came up with on his own. There are independent speeches by all sorts of people from 6 years ago that complain about the corruption of the prosecutor in question, which makes this whole point moot. The prosecutor was fired for not investigating the company that hired Hunter Biden.

Like most liars, Trump isn't inventing everything out of thin air, but he misrepresents so often and so much that you can't draw any useful conclusions from anything he says.

> The implication of working coronavirus vaccine by end of October was that it would be available for use (you can find quotes from the Trump administration saying they were working on distribution of hundreds of millions of doses by the end of the month), not that there would be a preliminary report from a still ongoing trial indicating that the vaccine works.

Trump said there would be news of a vaccine. Obviously, it won't be available by November. If you listened to Trump or Pence, you'd know that the US arranged for a working vaccine to be delivered by December or January, not November.

> The question was whether it led to improper behavior on the part of Joe Biden. That email proves nothing. It's entirely plausible that Hunter Biden got this guy an invite to some social function where shook hands with the Vice President.

And indeed, that would actually make Joe Biden's claim that he had no involvement with his son's business dealings a lie. Biden could have been honest and said, I met a few of my son's friends but we never discussed business. However, he didn't. He unequivocally stated that he had absolutely no knowledge of his son's business dealings and had no interaction with anyone from Burisima. That is a lie.

> The prosecutor was fired for not investigating the company that hired Hunter Biden.

Then why did the new prosecutor immediately drop charges and investigations against Burisima? if this was the reason he was fired and replaced, shouldn't the new prosecutor then take up the charges?

Sorry for the late reply. Hacker News has partially shadow banned me for not toeing the party line.

> The Steele dossier includes information from Russian sources. It was not "paid for" by Russia.

Literally in USA today today my man: https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2020/11/10/we-d...

Quote: When the FBI obtained the dossier in September 2016, compiled by a former British intelligence agent Christopher Steele, Comey told lawmakers he was unaware Steele's primary source was a suspected Russian agent.

A Russian agent is someone paid by Russia. Hence the dossier was sourced from misinformation spread by a paid Russian agent.

>the dossier was sourced from misinformation spread by a paid Russian agent.

You're moving the goalposts. You original said the report itself was "known to have been paid for by Russia".

It's plainly false that the report was paid for by Russia and your attempt to assert this as an indisputable fact by prefixing it with "known to" makes it doubly disingenuous.

Just look at the blatant lies he said about COVID19, it's laughable if the consequences wouldn't be so serious and tragic. Yes, politicians do lie (mostly in terms of vague while being up for election), but that doesn't mean Trump lying and other politicians lying are similar. I haven't seen other first world leaders state, without a doubt, that the COVID19 virus is a hoax, it's not real and all the other crap Trump espoused in regards to COVID.

I’m just curious, because this is something which happens with Trump constantly...

This particular claim isn’t as bad as the Charlottesville lie, but Trump didn’t say that COVID is a hoax — he said;

> ”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’d 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.”

The next day when asked about it;

> Trump: No, no, no. “Hoax” referring to the action that they take to try and pin this on somebody, because we’ve done such a good job. The hoax is on them, not — I’m not talking about what’s happening here; I’m talking what they’re doing. That’s the hoax. That’s just a continuation of the hoax, whether it’s the impeachment hoax or the “Russia, Russia, Russia” hoax. This is what I’m talking about. Certainly not referring to this. How could anybody refer to this? This is very serious stuff.

But what the media reports is that Trump called nazis good people (he said exactly the opposite) and that Trump called COVID a hoax (he said exactly the opposite). I think these lies upsets a lot of people and drive a lot of support to Trump who otherwise wouldn’t support him.

https://www.factcheck.org/2020/04/democratic-ad-twists-trump...

Trump lies every day, and you have ... the ukraine thing.

Gotcha.

You don't convince people to stop telling the truth with your cute little nonsense about turning people pro-trump. On election day, this year, he claimed victory before all the votes were counted. If you support that, you don't support democracy. Nothing else compares.

Every time a right wing tries to say the "media" is unfair I ask for a single example and they always fail. 100% of the time. All just a bunch of whiners IMO.

But sure, please take pride in your support of Trump, who peddled the racist conspiracy theory that Obama isn't a citizen. Good for you champ.

Example of unfair media: Nick Sandmann; lack of coverage for Tara Reade; etc. Want more? Let's go...

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