Trump Did Not Mock Disabled Reporter
That's the long and and the short of it.
Well, it's the short of it, actually. The long of it is: he did mock him...but he did not mock him for his disability. Trump uses that spastic shtick to make fun of people--sometimes himself--who have screwed up. He didn't even know who the reporter was, so didn't know he was disabled.
I think this is significant. It's a big, easily-debunked lie--fake news, as they say. How am I--devoted as I am to debunking stupid anti-Trump hyperbole--just now finding this out?
Well, it's the short of it, actually. The long of it is: he did mock him...but he did not mock him for his disability. Trump uses that spastic shtick to make fun of people--sometimes himself--who have screwed up. He didn't even know who the reporter was, so didn't know he was disabled.
I think this is significant. It's a big, easily-debunked lie--fake news, as they say. How am I--devoted as I am to debunking stupid anti-Trump hyperbole--just now finding this out?
posted by Winston Smith at
10:20 PM
5 Comments:
Donald Trump knew the reporter:
http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2016/oct/20/donald-trump/donald-trump-says-hillary-clinton-wrong-say-he-moc/
Thanks--so it looks like he *did* know him--but that leaves the point that he uses that same spastic shtick to ridicule people with some frequency. And only one known case in which the object of the ridicule was disabled. If *that* part is true, I still think that the obvious conclusion is that he wasn't making fun of the guy for his disability.
No, he was making fun of all people with disabilities that involve spasticity. He resembles a middle school bully on that score.
Ugh, this is a great example of why Politifact has lost all credibility with me.
The headline reads: “Donald Trump says Hillary Clinton is 'wrong' to say he mocked a disabled reporter” and they flatly assert that this is false.
But the real question is, of course, “Did Donald Trump mock a disabled reporter for his disability?” That’s the scandal. Merely mocking someone for incompetence at his or her job is not scandalous. On the subject of other videos that show Trump flailing in a similar way when mocking others who are not disabled, Politifact says:
“In other words, the most you could say about these bits of evidence is that they demonstrate that Trump is an equal-opportunity mocker. They don’t help refute Clinton’s charge that Trump mocked Kovaleski.”
This is just have-you-stopped-beating-your-wife?-level sophistry. They’ve deliberately phrased the question in such a way as to avoid the issue at hand, and are relying on an ambiguity between the two questions in order to make it seem like answering one answers the other.
An honest broker would have to ask “Did Donald Trump mock a reporter’s disability?” and, given the evidence of similar gestures being used to mock others who were not disabled, the answer must be “Inconclusive” at best.
It’s a pity our mainstream institutions of journalism have sold their integrity so cheaply. There is plenty of fertile ground to attack Trump’s mendacity, cruelty, idiocy, etc., without trying to stack the deck against him.
I agree, JP.
As first Anon showed, the case isn't nearly as clear as I initially thought it was--but I'm still inclined to think it's not what he was doing.
Though it's not, I have to admit, something I'd put past him with absolute comfort. He gets mad and just says nutty shit about people. I don't think those things are the consequences of any deep nor theoretical racism or whatever...but dude just says some crazy shit.
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