Trump's Tweets | Imamother

Blue jay

Tue, Jun 06 2017, 3:47 pm

anon for this wrote:

Thanks for explaining. I would have a difficult time supporting a president who I believed was untrustworthy and whose administration was insane and incoherent. Even if I agreed with his policy goals, I'd be concerned that someone like that does not have the character and temperament to lead the country safely and effectively. It's enlightening for me to hear the opinions of posters who believe that character and temperament are less important than policy, so I appreciate your response.

As opposed to Obama who was all character and temperment but could NOT LEAD this country safely and effectively!

Fox

Tue, Jun 06 2017, 3:58 pm

SixOfWands wrote:

My problem isn't that a president uses social media.

My problems include:

(1) That his tweets are often factually incorrect.

(2) He is using social media to attempt to de-legitimize the press, in an effort to make it appear to many of his followers that he is the only accurate source of information. But see (1).

(3) No president should be engaging in a twitter war. Twitter wars are ridiculous when they involve pop stars; they're embarrassing when they involve politicians.

He even undercuts himself. He just tweeted about the "travel ban" after months of legal argument that its not a "travel ban."

I don't see these as problems unique to Trump; I see them as problems of the medium.

We were used to a communication paradigm in which every statement uttered by a President was parsed by a team of advisors and aides for potential inconsistencies, errors, etc. What we ended up with were statements that were so delicately worded that they meant nothing.

The social media paradigm involves raw, unfiltered, unedited communication. That kind of impromptu communication has different pros and cons when compared to more formal communications.

The press hasn't figured out how to adapt to the new paradigm. They still want to sit in the West Wing, ask questions, and file stories. That's not going to work anymore. As the Buggles sang back in 1980, "Video killed the radio star. We can't rewind; we've gone too far."

But how is the information I get directly from Trump less reliable than the information I get from Sean Spicer as relayed to Jim Acosta, packaged by a producer, and read to me by Anderson Cooper? If Trump is distorting facts, the inherent "telephone game" model makes the situation even worse. Let critics respond directly to the tweets, which they do.

PinkFridge wrote:

So it would be nice that if a president does use Twitter, her/his spelling should be ok, s/he should use minimal shorthand, and s/he should be coherent.

Ah, the future. The promised us flying cars and gave us 140 characters. Maybe he should "Get on Gab" -- they offer 345!

Last edited by Fox on Tue, Jun 06 2017, 4:10 pm; edited 1 time in total

MiracleMama

Tue, Jun 06 2017, 4:07 pm

I'm not sure about the difference between the last two choices you gave for the poll. Either work equally for me. I don't have a twitter account. I don't see his tweets. I don't care to see his tweets. I am vaguely aware of his tweets sometimes being immature or maybe inciteful (is this not a word? My spellcheck doesn't seem to care for it) to some. I really don't care. In theory I think a president should be eloquent and diplomatic, but we've had plenty of those presidents who didn't do anything but give pretty speeches so I just don't care anymore. I'm only paying attention to what he does for our economy, our safety, etc. If he wants to tweet stupid comments along the way, whatever. Like I said, I don't have twitter and I really don't care.

SixOfWands

Tue, Jun 06 2017, 4:51 pm

Fox wrote:

SixOfWands wrote:

I don't necessarily disagree that there are issues endemic to the medium. But Trump magnifies those issues.

Sure, he's an off the cuff kind of guy. And sure, people make mistakes. But he doesn't seem to care whether or not what he says is accurate. Take my example about appointments. Objectively speaking, they're not being delayed; they simply haven't been submitted. I expect more out of the President of the United States than I do out of Justin Bieber. I expect truth.

All the while, he's attempting to delegitimize the press that comments on these patent falsehooods. Just today: "The FAKE MSM is working so hard trying to get me not to use Social Media. They hate that I can get the honest and unfiltered message out." "Sorry folks, but if I would have relied on the Fake News of CNN, NBC, ABC, CBS, washpost or nytimes, I would have had ZERO chance winning WH." IOW, ignore the man behind the curtain. Someone tries to present you with facts that contradict me? Ignore it. I'm the ONLY legitimate source of information. The NY Times points out that I didn't make nominations? Fake news. Etc.

And the Twitter Wars. I hate to say they're "not presidential," but, well, they're not.

And FTR, video didn't kill the radio star. Music videos are dead. [So is radio, but I digress.]

Fox

Tue, Jun 06 2017, 5:52 pm

SixOfWands wrote:

"Sorry folks, but if I would have relied on the Fake News of CNN, NBC, ABC, CBS, washpost or nytimes, I would have had ZERO chance winning WH."

So . . . I'm not supposed to believe Trump because he distorts facts . . . but CNN, NBC, ABC, CBS, WashPost, and NYT should, de facto, be allowed to select the President?

A few days ago I was listening on NPR (again, in the car, so I don't have details) to a report from Blue, Texas, a miniscule town in South Central Texas. The specific topic was Trump's withdrawal from the Paris Climate Agreement. The people interviewed -- all Trump voters -- had differing opinions about the withdrawal and the appropriate response to global warming. They were definitely not all in agreement with Trump's action, and they were mostly well-informed on the the pros and cons regarding the issue.

The picture you're painting is that of vacuous Trump supporters who blindly follow his lead no matter where it takes him; who are focused exclusively on his personality; and who have no other sources of information.

I don't think that picture is accurate. Even in tiny Blue, Texas -- not exactly a world-renowned center for sophisticated intellectual pursuits -- most Trump voters have basic knowledge about important issues and feel no compunction to agree with Trump no matter what.

What eludes me completely -- even more than Trump's most obtuse tweets -- is the devotion displayed by anti-Trumpers in promoting the caricature of the easily-manipulated, yahoo Trump voter. Looking down their noses at 62 million voters cost the Democratic Party one election that, frankly, they were perfectly positioned to win. I would think that both the DNC itself and various Trump opponents would learn the lesson, but apparently not.

youngishbear

Tue, Jun 06 2017, 6:16 pm

Fox, I don't believe that about Trump voters. I was shocked at their choice, their willingness on election day to put aside certain basic principles in favor of priorities that were so different than mine. But that's over.

I am even more disturbed every day by Trump voters who still refuse to call a spade a spade.

You can blame the medium, but isn't it a conservative argument to say "guns don't kill people" - IOW don't blame the tool but the person who misuses it? (Personally I don't see why anyone would need a gun if no one else had a gun but I'm a liberal and I digress).

Twitter may be a format that is easy to misuse, as well as presenting users in their worst light.

But when the leader of the free world insists on revealing his ignorance for all the world I can't help but lose respect for those who can't admit that.

SixOfWands

Tue, Jun 06 2017, 6:20 pm

Fox wrote:

Straw man a little?

Where on earth did I suggest that any media outlet should be allowed to select the president?

And of course many Trump supporters are well-informed. But many are not. And I can cherry pick as well as you. This is from Fox News (not Fox- you), of all places:

Quote:

A Fox News poll came out the other night, and I tweeted some of the findings about President Trump.

No analysis, no commentary. Just a few numbers.

“Trump approval at 40%, down from 45% last month. 53% say his agenda is coming apart; 44% say he's shaking up Washington.”

And: “68% approve of DOJ naming a special counsel, 29% disapprove.”

Well, you’d have thought I had called for the president’s impeachment.

I practically got buried under an avalanche of angry tweets.

Most of them didn’t seem to want to engage in an actual discussion. They just attacked me, Fox, and polling in general:

“The way Fox is headed. This poll is wrong. I talk to people from all over the US everyday. Trump is still tops. No one unhappy. All cool.”

“BS polls again. Trying to manipulate population.”

“You just don't get it.. We don't believe any b.s. polls you media types hail don't care don't believe them move on.”

“Who the hell did you poll???”

“100% of me thinks Fox is joining the MSM. Fake news.”

“Your polls are a bunch of ****. Never polled us.”

“NO ONE CARES abt the dumb polls-they were wrong calling election- case closed!”

“Stick it up your liberal [blank], Howie!”

You gotta love social media.

Now far be it from me to defend all polls. Sometimes they’re flawed, or just wrong. And the media are overly addicted to them.

You could also argue that Trump has faced consistently negative media coverage, especially over the Russia investigation, and that is depressing his numbers.

But the barrage from Trump supporters didn’t have much to do with that.

It was about simply dismissing news organizations, including Fox, and their polling as mere fiction.

Many are so persuaded that the media establishment has it in for Trump that they don’t want to hear contrary information. They are tuning it out.

I know this because of the comments I get if I analyze anything from, say, the New York Times or Washington Post, even if the stories turn out to be true. And Fox News is no longer immune to these complaints.

The Fox poll, which surveyed more than 1,000 people with a 3-point margin of error, was hardly an outlier. In the last two days, Gallup has Trump’s job approval at 39 percent, Quinnipiac at 37, Ecoomist at 40 and Reuters at 37. The exception is Rasmussen, which puts Trump at 48 percent.

The everyone-I-talk-to argument betrays a lack of understanding of how scientific polling works.

For the record, the final Fox poll before Election Day gave Hillary Clinton a 4-point lead, overstating her margin, but keep in mind that she won the popular vote. Trump is president because he won key Electoral College battlegrounds.

The troubling thing here is that we no longer agree on a common set of facts. Conservatives and liberals are increasingly in their own silos, turning to their own opinionated media sources and constructing their Facebook and Twitter feeds the same way.

If everything is fake news, then the role of news in fostering intelligent debate is decimated.

And I don’t need a poll to be sure of that.

Emphasis added. And let me add, he's right.

And if I wanted to, I could cherry pick hundreds of people who reject FACTS because Trump called them "fake news." And that is dangerous.

But here's why Trump's tweets are important: According to Sean Spicer, they should be "considered official statements by the President of the United States." Which makes perfect sense to me, considering they are, well, statements of the President of the United States. So when Trump says that we need a "travel ban," I think that he's in favor of a "travel ban." But what about when he re-tweets unverified information from, eg, Drudge. Drudge saying it is one thing. But POTUS? That has imprimatur.

kjb

Tue, Jun 06 2017, 8:16 pm

I live in London. We - ALL OF US - think not only that Trump's recent tweets are disgraceful, insulting, insensitive and very, very undiplomatic, but that they are utterly, utterly juvenile. We are not panicking. We are not unduly 'alarmed'. But what neither us nor our elected mayor are being in the face of recent events is juvenile. Thank G-d

Jeanette

Tue, Jun 06 2017, 9:48 pm

Quote:

So . . . I'm not supposed to believe Trump because he distorts facts . . . but CNN, NBC, ABC, CBS, WashPost, and NYT should, de facto, be allowed to select the President?

Non-sequitor. If you acknowledge he distorts facts why would you believe him? What's that got to do with media choosing the president?

Quote:

A few days ago I was listening on NPR (again, in the car, so I don't have details) to a report from Blue, Texas, a miniscule town in South Central Texas. The specific topic was Trump's withdrawal from the Paris Climate Agreement. The people interviewed -- all Trump voters -- had differing opinions about the withdrawal and the appropriate response to global warming. They were definitely not all in agreement with Trump's action, and they were mostly well-informed on the the pros and cons regarding the issue.

The picture you're painting is that of vacuous Trump supporters who blindly follow his lead no matter where it takes him; who are focused exclusively on his personality; and who have no other sources of information.

I don't think that picture is accurate. Even in tiny Blue, Texas -- not exactly a world-renowned center for sophisticated intellectual pursuits -- most Trump voters have basic knowledge about important issues and feel no compunction to agree with Trump no matter what.

What eludes me completely -- even more than Trump's most obtuse tweets -- is the devotion displayed by anti-Trumpers in promoting the caricature of the easily-manipulated, yahoo Trump voter. Looking down their noses at 62 million voters cost the Democratic Party one election that, frankly, they were perfectly positioned to win. I would think that both the DNC itself and various Trump opponents would learn the lesson, but apparently not.

This is from the article you refer to:

Quote:

Everybody wants the environment to do good,” he says. “But then, nobody wants to lose their job over it either.”

That kind of shrug over the decision to end a U.S. commitment to fight climate change was a common response. Of the eight people asked in Blue, two generally supported the plan, while six said they had no opinion. Though, perhaps surprisingly for such a conservative part of the state, everybody agreed the climate is changing.

2 agreed with pulling out, 6 had no opinion. Not exactly a fount of nuance and subtlety.

But just as many have no opinion on trumps various policies I have no opinion on the intelligence of trump voters. I dont know why it matters. I have many opinions about trump, but I know not to generalize about large groups of people.

FranticFrummie

Wed, Jun 07 2017, 6:32 am

People should say what they are thinking, whether it's stupid, annoying, or whatever. It lets you see the real person, and you can make your decisions about them based on that.

The very wise poet Maya Angelou said "When a man shows you who he truly is, BELIEVE HIM."

This is true for racists, anti-Semites, idiots, and wise men alike. What I really can't stand, is people who are phony hypocrites.

A Black friend of mine said "I like my bigots up front where I can see them. Otherwise, they'll just stab you in the back."

In some small towns in the American south, there are still restaurants that have "No Negroes" signs in the window. No problem, he won't give them his money. He said it's much worse in the north, where he'd get lousy service, no coffee refills, and possibly have his food spit on.

Jeanette

Wed, Jun 07 2017, 7:31 am

FranticFrummie wrote:

People should say what they are thinking, whether it's stupid, annoying, or whatever. It lets you see the real person, and you can make your decisions about them based on that.

Yeah, that works great in real life.

fmt4

Wed, Jun 07 2017, 7:43 am

sheep wrote:

I didn't say he doesn't have a real plan to deal with terrorism. However, the travel ban was imho the least effective plan he could have proposed. The left is correct in that respect.

I suspect after losing this battle he will be able to propose a tougher plan. Because people will be on his side no matter what.

Lol, does no one else find this poster's name to be very ironic when this is the kind of beliefs she espouses? LOL

FranticFrummie

Wed, Jun 07 2017, 7:48 am

Jeanette wrote:

Yeah, that works great in real life.

It works for me. I'd rather people be direct, rather than sweet and phony.

Of course, the ideal is to be direct AND TACTFUL. Nobody is accusing Trump of being tactful, that is for sure.

I strive to tell the truth in the kindest way possible, and still stay on the side of honesty.

I'll only tell you that your butt looks big in that dress, if you tell me you REALLY want to know. Wink

Otherwise, I'll say something like "I don't think the tailoring on that dress suits your figure. Maybe try something with a bit more flare."

fmt4

Wed, Jun 07 2017, 7:56 am

So Trump sharing classified information? That's just him being straight up- saying what he thinks! Insulting other leaders on a personal level? Amaaaazing candidness, maybe all leaders should start doing that, it would totally solve all our problems if they all acted like kindergarteners!

Jeanette

Wed, Jun 07 2017, 8:04 am

The problem with letting racists out of their cages is it assumes people have options. Go to the back of the bus? Sure, I'll just use the other bus line down there.

And what happens when instead of punishing the worst offenders we reward them instead?

youngishbear

Wed, Jun 07 2017, 8:05 am

FranticFrummie wrote:

Indeed it does.

Indeed it does.

Smile

treestump

Wed, Jun 07 2017, 8:09 am

FranticFrummie wrote:

Would you really like to hear anti Semitic slurs every day?

I wouldn't... I know there are people who don't say certain things because of social norms and they aren't authentic, but I'd rather not hear everything they think about dirty Jews who control Hollywood and Capitol Hill and should have been burned in Auschwitz. My life is a lot more pleasant this way.

FranticFrummie

Wed, Jun 07 2017, 8:09 am

fmt4 wrote:

I never said that people should get a free pass to be a jerk. Free speech has natural consequences. When those consequences are removed, that's where the trouble starts.

I voted for Trump, but if he does anything impeachable, I'll be behind the impeachment 100%. He should absolutely have to answer for everything he says and does.

If I say something awkward that hurts my friend, you bet I should be called out on it, and I should apologize and make ammends.

Everyone should speak their ideas, keeping in mind that they will have to answer for it. Nobody gets a free pass, and I mean NOBODY.

That is the essence of liberty. Freedom isn't free, it comes with a very high price tag. Don't open your mouth unless you're willing to pay the cost, but by all means, if it needs saying, don't let it stop you, either.

FranticFrummie

Wed, Jun 07 2017, 8:17 am

treestump wrote:

I'm on a lot of mixed forums on the internet. I hear it all. I've lost family in the Shoah.

I still prefer honesty. I like knowing exactly where I stand with people.

Just speaking for myself, ignornance is not bliss. It makes me nervous.

Of course you have the right to choose to shield yourself from other people's ugliness as much as possible. We all have to choose for ourselves, where we draw the line of what influences we let into our minds.

I'd be much more upset if I were exposed to degrading images of women every day. I don't want to see nearly naked women on billboards and bus shelters, in pop up ads and fashion magazines. Other people have the right to promote these images, and I have the right to block them, boycott them, and educate my DD against them.

I find war very distressing, but I don't write to papers telling them not to write about it. I choose what news media I read, and I choose when I have the emotional strength to handle it.

The world is complicated and messy. We spend more energy than we realize protecting our psyches from the onslaught of garbage that is out there.

farm

Wed, Jun 07 2017, 10:22 am

fmt4 wrote:

Lol, does no one else find this poster's name to be very ironic when this is the kind of beliefs she espouses? LOL

I am shocked that you would post such a hurtful comment at the expense of another person. And that 3 people liked this.