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Comment by kuzimoto | Hacker News Reader

Can you be upset and disavow what someone says but still support them? The instant someone says something "bad" they should be just thrown out?

I don't agree with a lot of what Trump says, but I don't hold him accountable for others' actions unless he specifically called for violence which I don't think he did in this case. He does say some questionable things, but has always disavowed violence on both sides.

Obama has promulgated lots of anti-police rhetoric, and there are some who would blame him for certain attacks on police. I disagree with things he said, but would not blame him for any of that.

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If you truly can't see any relationship between Trump's rhetoric and the behavior of his extremist base - particularly with the conspiracy theory of the 2020 election being stolen from him - a conspiracy theory he continued to spread at every available moment and which provided the impetus behind numerous incidents of violence leading up to the events at the Capitol just days earlier - then we may be at an impasse.

As far as I can tell, Obama is considered "anti-police" simply because he supports BLM, but BLM have legitimate concerns about police violence and systemic racism in law enforcement, and voicing those concerns doesn't make one anti-police. I have yet to find an "anti-police" statement made by Obama which condemns all police and calls them all evil, that is at all equivalent to the vitriol or paranoia in Trump's rhetoric.

It seems like a false equivalence drawn between the two.

There are people out there that are crazy, and will use anything to justify their actions. Unless he called for a specific action, I don't see how he is to blame. It would be setting a bad precedent to blame or punish anyone that said something provacative that is not explicitly a call for inciting harm/violence. People need to be held responsible for their own actions.

I believe Obama used carefully picked statistics to say there is widespread racism in the police. There are likely racist people/cops, but I don't believe there is evidence to suggest widespread racism.

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