Still disengaged from empirical reality, still enamored with words

Salena Zito's observation from 2016 about the press and Trump remains true in 2024.  She noted back then, in an essay in The Atlantic, that 

It’s a familiar split. When he [Trump] makes claims like this, the press takes him literally, but not seriously; his supporters take him seriously, but not literally.

Trump's speaking style has always been fairly bombastic and prone to exaggeration.  He is usually directionally correct, with an empirical basis for his claim but his claim often outstrips the data.  If you are sympathetic to his message, you discount the exaggeration and are pleased that he is focused on the issue.  If you are hostile to Trump or his message, you react in fury to his over-claiming which you interpret as outright lying.

The legacy mainstream media no doubt hate Trump and mainstream middle Americans appreciate his focus on their issues.  Hence, "the press takes him literally, but not seriously; his supporters take him seriously, but not literally."

Paradoxically, there is truth on both sides.  Trump does start from a factual basis and then over-claims through his reliance on superlatives.  "The most perfect, nice" calls, the "largest" rallies, "the most beautiful words."  His partiality for superlatives led to The Beautiful Poetry of Donald Trump by Rob Sears.  Each poem is constructed from directly quoted lines in actual speeches, all in his idiosyncratic speaking style. 

Every line is sourced to a speech.

A beautiful, simple life

by Donald Trump

Beautiful bikes

Beautiful aircraft carriers

Beautiful coal

Beautiful lie by Crooked Hillary

Beautiful hats

Beautiful women

Beautiful tanks

Beautiful Humvees

Beautiful copper piping

Beautiful auto plant

Beautiful marines

I’ve never seen scissors that look this beautiful before!

There are more pointed, acerbic ones:

Crooked Hillary: a Haiku

by Donald Trump

She got schlonged, she lost

A nasty horrid woman

Time to drain the swamp

The point is, the legacy mainstream media can choose to either focus on the substance of his claim or they can choose to focus on the Jesuitical semantics of how the claim is rendered.  Which brings us to How a Fox News host’s misleading question about migrant children morphed into a Trump talking point by Linda Qiu in The New York Times.

True to form, they have chosen Jesuitical semantics.  

The substance is readily understandable.  Among those coming across the border illegally, there are many unaccompanied children.  From Qiu:

Under government protocols, the children, once apprehended by border officials, are placed in the care of the Health and Human Services Department’s refugee resettlement office. The office then releases the children to sponsors, sometimes family members, who undergo a background check. 

Obviously that is a system prone to abuse and there has long been concern about the health and well-being of such released children.  Are they being cared for?  Are they healthy and being educated?  Are they being exploited for labor?  Are they being abused?  Are they being trafficked?  All valid concerns.  

It is also indisputable that the more illegal immigrants you have, the greater the number of unaccompanied children you are likely to have.  

Once the children are released into the custody of others, the Health and Human Services Department’s refugee resettlement office periodically attempts to check on their status via phone calls.  In any given year they are routinely unable to account for between 12-33% of the children whose status they are trying to confirm.

Are the children who cannot be accounted for missing?  Depends on the semantics.  They are unaccounted for, which is different from known to be missing, which is different from dead, which is different from trafficked.  They are simply unaccounted for.  If we are lucky, they are all OK and being cared for well.  But we don't know.

Trump and others extrapolate from "unaccounted for" to explicitly negative outcomes with careless ease.  "Unaccounted for" is a bad reflection on Health and Human Services.  You should not lose track of children.  And almost certainly some portion, hopefully a tiny portion, have suffered come grievous fate.  But we do not know that.

The exaggeration of leaping from "unaccounted for" to "missing" or even to "dead" is empirically unjustified.  But rhetorically, it is a common technique which every advocacy group uses.  You bring attention to an issue by exaggerating its magnitude and gravity and most people would accept that the fate of children is one of our most significant civilizational responsibilities.  If anything warrants the rhetoric of exaggeration, it is the fate of children.

The New York Times is committed to condemning Trump for his exaggerated rhetoric rather than in exploring whether there is an empirical basis for his claims.  Once again, all these years later "the press takes him literally, but not seriously; his supporters take him seriously, but not literally."

Incredibly, while trying to distract from the reality of his case, Qiu provides the underlying data to prove it.

Trump's implied argument is:

1. Health and Human Services Department cannot account for a large percentage and large number of unaccompanied children.
2. Some portion of those unaccounted children are likely at risk of exploitation, abuse, and trafficking.
3. The numbers and percentages of unaccounted for children are much greater now than they were under Trump.
4. The problem needs to be solved and Trump can solve it.

Arguments 1 and 3 are indisputably true and the data is in Qiu's reporting.  Argument 2 is likely to be true but unproven.  Argument 4 is a subjective one.

How many children are unaccounted for now compared to when Trump was President?

Qiu reports that by the end of his administration, Health and Human Services could not account for 11.6 percent of children placed, totaling some 9,200 children.  

And the Biden Administration?  There are two elements to that calculation:

The New York Times reported last year that the office [Health and Human Services], which checks on the children via phone calls, was unable to reach 85,000 children, or about a third of cases, in 2021 and 2022. 

[snip]

Mr. Trump appeared to extrapolate this figure from government data showing that nearly 400,000 children had been placed with sponsors over the past four years. Assuming that the office was still unable to reach a third of them, that is equivalent to about 133,000 children.

 Qiu is reporting that 33 percent of children are unaccounted for and with the dramatic increase in illegal immigration, that likely amounts to 133,000 children.  

Granted that these are estimations from the best and most recent data, but they are still well-sourced.

So the percentage of children unaccounted for trebled between Trump and Biden.  The number of children unaccounted for increased 14.5 times.  

At 133,000 unaccounted for children, there is almost certainly a sizable number of tragedies occurring owing to failure on the part of the Biden/Harris Administration.  Is it 1,330 murdered or trafficked or exploited children?  Is it 13,300 murdered or trafficked or exploited children?

We don't know but it is certainly not Zero.

Does Trump have a reasonable empirical basis for believing that 133,000 unaccompanied illegal immigrant children are unaccounted for?  Yes!

Are there reasons to be concerned about the welfare for those unaccounted for children?  Yes!

Qiu documents the substance of Trump's case.  For those who take the welfare of children seriously, that is a sufficient argument.

If you are an ideological opponent of Trump, and/or the legacy mainstream media, then the substance of the case is not important.  The rhetoric and bombast is what is important.

Is the empirical case airtight?  No!

Is "unaccounted for" the same as "missing?"  No!

It appears that Qiu was attempting to discredit Trump's argument by attributing it to a "misleading question" and claiming that it is just a "talking point."  As usual for the legacy mainstream media, her reporting torpedoes her effort.

If you want to dismiss concern for the welfare of children based on the fact that "unaccounted for" is not necessarily the same as "missing" that is, literally, a linguistically fair argument.  On the other hand, it is not a serious argument.

Trump has the substantive and serious argument.  Biden/Harris cannot account for the well-being of 133,000 children in their custody.  By playing with words, Qiu and The New York Times can downplay the potential tragedy but it reflects poorly on both of them.