Admiral PatrickTrump Promises 'Very Large Faucet' Will Funnel Water from Oregon to Los Angeles
BoddhisatvaI guess it was gradual, but when did it become the job of journalists to try and guess what politicians mean when they make statements? Shouldn’t the meaning be made clear by the speaker? Right now it seems like its:
Trump: Speaks rambling gibberish saying something about a faucet
Journalists: “It seems like Trump is talking about the Columbia river and here’s why that is significant…”
The difference is he could be the next president and try to turn whatever he’s thinking into national policy, so it’s worthwhile to try and dissect what he’s saying.
But those experts are also (somehow, still) not really accustomed to Trump’s bombastic language. He was like this long before he got into national politics, hyping real estate and business, and that’s a totally different world.
I get what you’re saying but they really should just be pointing out that he’s not making any sense. Trump’s speeches are being treated like Nostradamus’ prophesies now. He spews a bunch of nonsense and people make up what they think it means. The guy should be in a home, not on the campaign trail and the media should make that clear to voters.
[deleted] in lemmyThe worst part is they nitpick any piberal or progressive candidate on their exact phrasing while translating conservative hate speech into something less horrible.
It’s not totally incoherent though, its vague and almost poetic.
This is kind of Trump’s talent. He makes these grand statements that aren’t quite lies. The crowd gets exactly what he’s trying to say: all this wayer is pouring from snowy mountains into the ocean is a “waste” when it could just be diverted to dry LA, so let’s fix that. It’s worded almost like a dream. It’s an attractive fantasy. But it’s also vague, not quite enough to be a lie even if the impliedfacts are straight up wrong.
What can the news do? If they dig into it, he didn’t really make any hard claims to roast. They can veer into opinion talk and say that sounds unpresedential and that he his speech should be more clear, but making fun of his speech style at a rally is not supposed to be their job. So they do what they can, guess what he’s saying and refute that.
Again, this was his talent before he got into politics. The Motley Fool did this great podcast on Trump (before Trump was big) where he sold massively overvalued real-estate from his private company to his public one, effectively “duping” the market, and it worked because he sold it as a vague fantasy just like this. It worked. He got plenty of criticism and it didn’t matter, because he threaded the needle and what he’s claiming is not hard enough to stick. This is what he does.
What can the news do? If they dig into it, he didn’t really make any hard claims to roast.
They can quote him as saying there’s “a large faucet as big as perhaps this building and it takes a day to turn” and say there is no such faucet and move on with their day. That would be a much better thing than what they’ve been doing since 2015 which is this bullshit. Trying to find a real life thing to attach his utterances to and then asking him if that was what he was referring to when he clearly wasn’t.