[resters]

That perspective is remarkably charitable to Trump, who not only claimed that the virus was a "hoax", but mobilized his loyalists in the media to spread harmful ideas about the level of contagion and lethality.

It is important to realize that Trump's comments about COVID-19 likely caused many people to defy their own common sense intuitions and do the opposite of what the experts have recommended.

In the US, direct censorship by government is not necessary. Voices that the government doesn't approve of are quickly censored/deplatformed by private sector firms, news feed algos are updated to suppress certain kinds of information, etc.

The extent to which firm authoritarian measures are necessary is determined by how compliant/obedient the citizens are. The Chinese government must be more heavy handed because there is an active culture of dissent, not because China is somehow innately more authoritarian.

[Mountain_Skies]

The president did not call the virus a hoax. You're either being intentionally disingenuous or are poorly informed. Before you post an out of context link to a partisan blog, go find the entire statement in context and realize everyone else here is quite able to do the same. If you wish to remain in an information bubble, that's your choice but don't be surprised when others who do not pop that bubble when you attempt to spread misinformation.

[resters]

Trump has mastered the art of saying word salads that convey what he wants but do not syntactically say what he communicated. He is the most talented politician the US has seen in decades, and this is just one example.

He says the word salad, the sound bite is picked up as outrageous, and then when the tiny subset of his supporters who care to look carefully at it examine the transcript, they can vindicate him based on technicalities of the syntax he used.

But make no mistake, he intended to communicate that the virus was a hoax and he did so quite effectively, just as he intended to show support for the white nationalists in Charlottesville and intended to convey that he thinks many immigrants are rapists.

While I am not a partisan for either party and despise most of the major pols, one must admit that Trump is very good at politics, and this is a great example. Once called out, his supporters defend him by dissecting the word salad and finding a well meaning, thoughtful comment where none ever existed :)

[surge]

Stop making me defend Trump, you guys are ignorant, or willfully misrepresenting the context.

In NYT, they featured this "opinion" piece:

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/26/opinion/coronavirus-trump...

tldr; If you're sick with Corona virus, the blame lies entirely with Trump, not China for hiding it early on, not the WHO for recommending countries continue as normal and tried to downplay it, Trump, and we should call it the Trump virus (the new "thanks Obama" I guess).

Two days later in reaction to this, Trump called this kind of talk in the media and on Twitter by DNC pundits (who take their talking points from NYT) a hoax. Everyone at the rally he was talking to had seen that article, cause it was shared and mocked, talked about on Fox News, everyone there had the same context, its your lack of awareness that causes the context shift, and when the media reported on it they also conveniently left out that context, because they're lazy at best, trying to steer the narrative at worse. People see the misrepresentation and they believe the media even less. They realize the bias is both ways, the people who claim to be factual ignore facts that aren't convenient.

It is only word salad to you because you walked in half way into the conversation, and are happy to assume the worst (that he said the virus itself was a hoax) without doing some background on it.

Criticize, but do so with full understanding.

[resters]

Those are reasonable points, and I acknowledge based on the details you mentioned that the incident of Trump referring to a "hoax" may not fit the standard pattern Trump uses. In another comment in this thread I describe the pattern as he used it about immigrants, about Charlottesville, etc. I'm curious if you think those cases are also situations where Trump deserves to have his character defended.

But, to your point, I strongly agree that the NYT has done a horrible job at journalism in the Trump era. Nearly every day there are headlines that focus on Trump's persona rather than the substance (or lack thereof) of his policies, and the paper seems to prefer to publish stories that appeal to its in-group rather than stories that report what happened and contextualize it over time. Often, nearly every single story on the front page starts with the word Trump, with a few left of center stories just to create the impression that the paper is not a right wing voice itself.

For instance, NYT readers likely do not know that Obama stared the tent camps for children of illegal immigrants who committed certain kinds of crimes, and that the audio of children crying was captured while Obama was in office.

To be clear, I have zero respect for Trump, and zero respect for the NYT. The article you linked is a shameful and unnecessary (and low quality) bit of drivel, meant only to secure more subscription fees from partisans. It doesn't add anything of value to the dialog.

I do think the word salad is a deliberate tactic used by Trump to achieve both a textual and subtextual outcome from his speech. He knows what will turn into a sound bite and tailors them to be the kinds of sound bites that will resonate both for him and against him. If you are skeptical of this point I will be happy to dig into it in more detail as it worked in his favor during the 2016 campaign.

[surge]

> Nearly every day there are headlines that focus on Trump's persona rather than the substance (or lack thereof) of his policies, and the paper seems to prefer to publish stories that appeal to its in-group rather than stories that report what happened and contextualize it over time.

This!

I just assume Trump can't talk, but apparently his supporters think he's talking off the cuff so he's just being authentic even if they wish he'd not do it so much or be so crass, which I guess to them is him being genuine or honest. Trump will openly admit the only reason we sell arms to Saudi Arabia is because of oil, where as every other President made excuses, that's weirdly more transparent. His misspellings etc on Twitter are people seeing someone tweet stream of conscious, not even taking the time to spell check or reword it, which is terrible for public office but things have gotten so bad with politics they see him as telling you exactly what he thinks even if its terrible.

I don't give him that much credit as far as tactics, I know he likes to troll the media, the media reacts predictably, and some of his supporters love to see the predictable reaction. The media has become addicted to it, and the ratings, the DNC listen and pander to fringe voices on Twitter mistaking them for average people. They've started focusing so hard on Trump they've gotten nothing done, their talking points are losing moderates. People remember Bush being called Hitler, now everyone is numb to it. People just expect news organizations who live in their own Twitter bubble and major blue cities who pretend to be impartial to shit all over the GOP and never give credit, and over look the same behavior when committed by their own side. People with center right positions on the political compass positions even Bernie Sanders supported, are called alt-right, people have just turned off to it. They routinely misrepresent their position, or setup a strawman in the headline and clarify in the bottom paragraph if at all. Nothing was learned from the last election. They pushed a man to the front of the line who wasn't polling well is just as bad with words but for different reasons, and cusses out union workers on the factory floor when they accurately describe his position he explained in a news interview.

[surge]

https://www.reddit.com/r/2ALiberals/comments/fgvw64/the_medi...

This is exactly what I mean.

[microcolonel]

> Trump has mastered the art of saying word salads that convey what he wants but do not syntactically say what he communicated.

"It's the President's fault that I ignored what he was saying so that I could interpret it uncharitably, and share that interpretation without a second thought."

> he thinks many immigrants are rapists

You got this from... What? A speech talking up the border wall, a measure that by definition only pertains to a subset of illegal aliens, not "immigrants" broadly.

You are responsible for your own ludicrous interpretations of plain language. It is not anyone else's fault that you choose to believe something is meant that isn't said.

When the President continues to say things like “I want people to come into our country in the largest numbers ever, but they have to come in legally”, you can't credibly interpret that as an indictment of immigrants.

[resters]

I didn't downvote your comment, by the way. It's a fair point.

Many politicians have tried to rally support for border security by describing illegal immigration as a source of violent crime. Trump mentioned "rapists" in his remarks as a way of communicating that same narrative, albeit a bit more colorfully.

The word salads are very ingenious, as they are essentially two messages in one. The message "immigrants are rapists" gets through to some of his supporters (who are happy to hear it) and the more nuanced message gets through to those who read the transcript or who parse the words more carefully.

It's an added benefit that when the opposing party's media jumps all over the comment, some portion of Trump's supporters believe that they intentionally ignored the intent of Trump's statement and are unfairly characterizing him as racist. Yet to many of his supporters, the racism is a welcome change and a sign of honesty and courage.

Whether you personally agree with Trump or not, you must acknowledge the mechanism I'm describing. It's brilliant, and it is why Trump has been so successful. He's able to break through the wall of fake-sounding language that holds back much political speech and reap the benefits of a more raw and hostile form of speech, while still being viewed as having expressed a reasonable view by his more sophisticated supporters.

If you don't view them as deliberate word salad bombs, then they are gaffes, but there have now been way too many of them for it to be accidental. Trump understands how to speak both in text and subtext for maximum emotional impact.

So while I personally find Trump to be one of the most reprehensible characters ever to hold high office in the US (and also a big embarrassment), I do give him credit for being skilled at political rhetoric.

[microcolonel]

> Many politicians have tried to rally support for border security by describing illegal immigration as a source of violent crime. Trump mentioned "rapists" in his remarks as a way of communicating that same narrative, albeit a bit more colorfully.

It is true that the subset of illegal aliens entering over the border (rather than overstaying visas) is very high in criminals. This subset is desperate, motivated, willing to break the law by definition; and most importantly, a large proportion of them enter this way because they don't qualify even to enter as tourists, because they have a criminal record of relevant offenses.

> If you don't view them as deliberate word salad bombs, then they are gaffes, but there have now been way too many of them for it to be accidental. Trump understands how to speak both in text and subtext for maximum emotional impact.

I agree that they are designed to be misinterpreted by some people, but the interpretation that manifests in the President's actions seems to be more the plain language one, rather than the "nefarious subtext" one. If the nefarious subtext were intended to be read by supporters rather than opposition, then it probably would be.

Because the nefarious subtext seems designed to enrage the opposition, or especially because some of it seems designed to make the President look bad, I sorta assume it was meant to be read by opposition, to enhance the team sport aspect of politics and give supporters a sense of camaraderie against the people who are controlled by the President's reverse-psychology.

[resters]

I think we generally agree. As you point out, all illegal immigrants are criminals by definition, so there is a lot of sloppy rhetoric and innuendo that is possible based on that technicality. Trump exploits it to the max.

I think Trump intends for the subtext aspect of his word salads to be consumed both by his opposition and by a small (but important) subset of his base. There are a lot of people in key voting districts who deeply resent immigrants because of competition for jobs, etc. For those voters, hearing politicians focus on things like latinx identity politics makes them feel alienated and resentful. In that context, Trump coming across as a bit biased against immigrants (if not outright racist) provides emotional proof that Trump is on their side, and lends credibility to his claims about returning America to its heyday when blue collar work offered a significantly higher standard of living than it does today.

Many modern politicians have done this. Some of Sanders' rhetoric from a few decades ago evokes xenophobic themes to underscore support for the working man, and nearly all serious presidential candidates from the Democratic party have found nationalistic language to communicate that rust belt workers will not be abandoned. Lots of this has been anti-trade, border security oriented, etc.

Worldwide, reductions in free trade are typically accompanied by nationalistic sentiments and political rhetoric. So it's all quite normal and to be expected.

But what I think sets Trump apart from the normal (and frankly already ugly) way that politicians try to do this is that his rhetoric is even more direct and the subtext hits on an even more direct emotional level. There are many ways to explain how someone from the GOP won over a lot of working class voters who had been loyal Democrats for years. It took this kind of extreme messaging.

Tangentially, Trumps tactic works because of how social media news feed algorithms work, since even old school media uses analytics that are heavily influenced by what spreads on social media. So all the efforts to police content and deplatform fringe voices are not going to make any difference in Trump's ability to use this technique, since the articles are written by the NYT and are seen by the target voters because one of their friends or family members in a blue state/district got riled up and shared it on social media.

Anyway, I find it very interesting and I appreciate your engagement with this discussion.

[grey-area]

He said, at a rally, about Democrat criticisms of the administration response:

'this is their new hoax'

That's pretty incoherent (criticisms may be untrue, but they're never a hoax), but strongly hints he thought the virus unimportant in the most charitable interpretation, or the threat a complete fabrication from democrats.

He then went on to lie about the number of cases in the country and the likely impact and said it was less serious than flu.

Trump's ignorance is going to kill a lot of people in the US.