From Trump: Americans Who Died in War are "Losers" and "Suckers" by Jeffrey Goldberg
I haven't followed the details closely because it seemed manifestly a political disinformation piece. But the controversy still roils on.
Goldberg claims that Trump has a low regard for the military and that this is manifested by an incident when he is claimed to have made disparaging comments about those fallen in war.
This seemed transparently political - Trump has high ratings among the military and is running in part on a law and order platform. Trying to convince people that he is anti-military serves to undermine both positions.
Much of the kerfuffle has been reportorial. Goldberg claims to have four anonymous sources. But they are anonymous. As long as his sources are anonymous, he might as well have simply made the whole thing up. All Goldberg is doing, at best, is passing along unsourced gossip. At worst he is deliberately lying. His position has not been helped by the fact that numerous individuals involved in the trip have directly stated that Goldberg's allegations are untrue. Goldberg's position is further weakened by the fact that this support for Trump is coming from individuals who are pretty bitter political opponents of Trump's. So it is definitely an issue of journalistic norms and professional standards.
Marginally interesting but routine.
I merely add three thoughts.
First - Many on the left are trying enthusiastically to push this article and trying to elevate the claim that Trump despises the military. What is striking to me is that most those making these claims are the same individuals, and certainly the same DNC, who were, three and a half years ago, arguing that Trump was too fond of the military and too inclined to appoint Generals to his administration.
These are not facially compatible claims. They cannot both be true simultaneously. Either the critics were mistaken before and Trump was not enthusiastic about military leadership then or they are mistaken now and he does admire them.
One could split a hair and say that the political opponents have evolved their thinking, but that still calls into question their capacity to make factually accurate assessments of the evidence. To be even more fair, I also suspect that Trump has been disappointed in the quality of military leaders, at least selectively and perhaps more broadly.
Obama gutted the military during his administration and was notorious for advancing politically compliant senior leadership. My suspicion is that Trump has significant respect for all who serve in the military but that his experience has been that many senior leaders are of lesser quality and capability, and have less leadership talent than he had anticipated.
But we are left with the fact that his political opponents have believed both that he is too fond of soldiers and that he also despises soldiers. They were wrong then, are wrong now or, by far the most likely, they were wrong both then and now.
Second - Based on the first. So far all the political and journalistic outrage over the Goldberg disinformation has been just that. Political and journalistic. I have not seen anyone who commented on the 180 degree change in belief by the DNC/talking heads. That seems strange as well.
Third - From a more epistemic perspective, this is kind of an interesting case study. An event is said to have happened (Trump disparages military). Goldberg claims four sources but they are unnamed and therefore of no value. Meanwhile, half a dozen or more participants in the events have explicitly denied Goldberg's account.
This is almost a convoluted reverse koan. We have all heard the paradoxical question, "If a tree falls in the forest and no one is there to observe, does it make a sound?" It is a prompt to clarify our thinking about definitions and reality and what can be known.
With Goldberg, we have a variant koan. "If an event is said to have happened, but no one witnessed it and those who were there say it did not happen, is it relevant?"
At one level, this is purely an evidentiary issue. The claimed words were spoken or not. So far, no one will step forward and stake their reputation on the fact that they were spoken. And multiple people who were there have publicly staked their reputations on the fact that it did not happen. The balance of probabilities is that this is simply a manufactured hit piece with no basis.
But . . . it is only a probability. Perhaps the words were spoken when only one or two persons were in the room. In which case the alternate testimonies denying it are irrelevant because they were not there to hear the disparagement. And the fact that the one or two who heard are unwilling to expose themselves to the vitriolic anger and danger of a campaign does not make the reality any less true.
Unless anything changes though, and restricting ourselves only to the testimonies available, in all probability, this was just a low quality political hit piece by Goldberg conjured from thin air by a corrupted advocate journalist.
But koans demand deeper consideration. There is another way to look at this.
Even if the claim (that Trump disrespects the military) is untrue, by making the claim of disrespect, doesn't Goldberg create a reality regardless of its empirical merits? Certainly some numbers of people will find this as additional evidence to support their prior suppositions about Trump.
Quite possibly there might be a thousand or ten thousand or a few dozens of thousands who might accept the baseless claim and change their mind about Trump. If a tree did fall in the forest and no one saw or knew that, but someone believes it to be true based solely on the claim and they act on that belief but those actions do not affect the tree or its environs, then what is known?
In Trump's case, if the false claim shifts votes, isn't the claim in some sense true simply because it was believed even if it is factually incorrect? That is a twisted line of thinking but a provocative one.
I can readily think of at three instances in a political context in which false claims have been made, they are known to have been false, and yet the false claim is consequential and still repeated.
Bush I and The Scanner - In 1992, at the beginning of his campaign for a second term and facing a primary challenge during a difficult economic environment, false reporting from a Grocers Convention seemed to demonstrate that Bush was so isolated and out of touch that he was unfamiliar with bar scanners. The story spiraled and was very effective in defining his persona. And it was completely untrue as reported by the Associated Press and even acknowledged by Snopes. Did it decide an election. Almost certainly not. Did it change the vote count? Probably.
Bush II and Mission Accomplished - On May 1, 2003, Bush made a visit to the returning aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln, as it arrived in its home port after a ten month deployment in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom. The Captain of the carrier had had a massive banner made up for their return "Mission Accomplished" referring to their ten month deployment. When Bush made a speech celebrating the crew's service, it was a backdrop.
His speech became known as the Mission Accomplished speech and was once again used to present a second Bush as out-of-touch with reality, even though nothing in his speech indicated a belief that the Iraqi war was yet over. This misrepresentation was sustained for many months and probably contributed to a turning against the war and to the narrow margin of Bush's victory in 2004.
Trump and Fine People at Charlotte - This is perhaps the most egregious instance as the lie is both blatant and still being propagated. In 2017, there was a protest in Charlottesville over removal of Confederate statues. The press has subsequently claimed repeatedly that President Trump condemned the violence of the protest (which resulted in one death) but have also claimed that he had said that there were good people on both sides of the protest, including white supremacists.
In all the videos of the speech, it is clear that Trump indicated that there were good people on both sides of the issue of whether statues of confederates should remain as an awareness of our history or removed out of current day sensitivities. He is quite explicit in his exception that the good people did not include of those who were violent or were the Nazi or white-supremacist counter-protesters. It's right there in the transcript. But the media went with the manufactured claim that Trump supported white nationalists and neo-nazis. And still do. Biden recently repeated the demonstrably untrue accusation.
It is ironical that Trump was making a distinction three years ago that the left and the media are trying now to maintain whenever they report on "mostly peaceful" protests which result in riots causing $100 million in property damage and multiple deaths and injuries. As Trump was saying, and as remains true today, peaceful protests of ten thousand people for 2-3 hours which then devolve into a riot of one thousand bad actors are two different things. The 10,000 peaceful and lawful protesters are good people and their protest is peaceful. The 1,000 Antifa/BLM/White Supremacists/Neo-Nazis who then convert the protest into a riot are the dangerous ones who should be condemned morally and legally. Trump was making the same distinction then as the press is trying to make today in order to distinguish protests of policing from looting and rioting.
That distinction was true then and it remains true today. But the media are going with a documented lie.
One could produce dozens or hundreds of these examples. The core issue is that in each of these instances, there is a core evidentiary truth which demonstrate that these claims are untrue. Bush I was familiar with scanners, Bush II did not claim the mission was accomplished, Trump did not claim neo-nazis were fine people. And, so far, there is no evidence Trump disparaged the military as alleged.
But as long as untruths are believed and acted upon, the allegations are not true but they are certainly consequential in their falsity.
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