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Comment by tombert | Hacker News Reader

Even if everything you said here is true, he's the president of the country. It is not unreasonable for the president of a nation to do the research of what they're endorsing before they endorse it, instead of backtracking immediately after backlash.

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It’s not unreasonable to backpedal even harder

Sure, it's better that he backpedaled than doubling down, but that doesn't mean that he cannot be criticized for the initial transgression.

If I drive drunk and then hit someone with my car, I'm not immediately forgiven just because I called 911 and offered to pay the hospital bill.

Retweet doesn't mean endorsement.

Standard defence after sth retweeted blew up. And it doesn't work like that.

Also, it wasn't "just a retweet". He literally wrote that he supported it.

I'm responding to the post above, not TFA.

he didnt just retweet. even if he did, president of the country should be held to higher standards than your average influencer.

Who decided that? Would you hold that same standard if a politician you didn’t like did it?

I don’t like most politicians, but if Bernie Sanders (someone I do like) blanket retweeted a crypto scam, I would say that that’s bullshit. Unless he was the biggest moron on the planet, he would have to know that a retweet will be read as an endorsement by a large number of people.

A public figure, particularly a high-profile elected figure, particularly a figure who is in charge of how laws are enforced, should be held to a high standard.

But as other people have pointed out, it actually wasn’t just a retweet.

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