What makes you think he hit his own thumb? He got a bunch of free media attention for an obvious gotcha, it helps build his political brand and the narrative he’s being unfairly targeted by the media, and it’s a dog whistle to the racists who are going to vote very very soon.
He played this right, I think.
Hahah, guilt by not-even-association and requiring a candidate to say bad things about people who want to vote for them is totally a gotcha question, especially when it’s the second time in as many days he’s being asked it. It’s a clear attempt to make him say bad things about part of his base immediately before important primary elections.
Not as much of a stupid gotcha as the buzzfeed Mussolini trick, but not exactly honest.
Is there anything wrong with a gotcha question if what’s got is the barely veiled white supremacist beliefs of a political candidate?
From what I read elsewhere, the reason Gramps emigrated to the US was because while he was making his fortune, he also “missed” Germany’s draft. When he returned to Germany, they stripped him of his citizenship and tossed him out. Pretty much making him a refugee. A rich one able to purchase passage on a steamer, but still a nationless refugee nonetheless
(I’m trying to find the link, its from an article I read about six months ago, about a biography of Trump.)
There’s no such thing as a gotcha question in the vetting of an individual seeking high office in this example.
In this example, a public endorsement is made by a former member of the HoR who remains themselves a public figure. Former Republican Representative, Dr (Not a Doctor) David Duke
Duke’s views are well known and he stands by them. There’s no gotcha to it because of the public nature of all aspects involved.
Trump can (and has, and hasn’t) disavow the person and endorsement, and that’s the end of it.
Trump can do otherwise, and give the question legs.
Someone said he doesn’t want to do what the media tell him to do, but they did not instruct him.
Gotcha journalism requires the interviewer to have a hidden agenda that is unfavourable or intended to damage the interviewee. No evidence of that here. It requires that the interviewer makes deliberate efforts to forward that alleged agenda, for instance by taking a quote and asking for explanation without including context, or discussing a matter both parties had agreed beforehand was not on the table, or other means of deliberate trickery. None of that is present here.
The question was legit, based on public information by public persons, regarding the topic at hand, not out of context and the interviewee was free to answer in the manner of their choosing.
Not Gotcha.
The NYT did a story too:
No, it’s not. If a candidate doesn’t want to say bad things about people who voters wouldn’t like, that’s a rather important question in the general context of who gets to be President.
A candidate is free to court the fringes, but (on either side) they don’t get to just ignore everyone else. That’s not always desirable, but there isn’t really a better option on the table at this point.
People may be mistaking gotcha journalism when they are trying to point at this as an association fallacy.
It isn’t an association fallacy because of the context. The nature of political/public life means that you do not get to choose who endorses you or who renounces you whether as a candidate or as an office holder.
It is a known and accepted risk. It’s the responsibility of the candidate/office holder to respond to endorsements or renouncements/repudiations when same do not accurately reflect / have a desired or favourable association with their person/office.
If The Donald stumbled on this, it’s because he’s a stumblebum, because it’s a straight-forward question that is not new. Duke is always sticking his dick in someone’s spokes.
For me his non-answer was an example of his lying technique, or one of them – just say you don’t know and that you’ll look into it, then move on (Mrs. Clinton does it too, actually). There’s no fucking way he didn’t know that white supremacists have been supporting him, and he should’ve been “got” harder about that.
I just can’t believe that Trump is so weird and irrational! This is a new behavior we must discuss!
Is this an accurate quote?
GOP frontrunner Donald Trump called for a “total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States …”
She sure is! But here’s a compromise formulation, from Ricky Roma in Glengarry Glen Ross:
“Always tell the truth, it’s the easiest thing to remember.”
It admits that memory isn’t perfect, but suggests truth has the best chance of accurate recall. I always live by this creed, except when I don’t.
This reminds me of when Toronto voted into the mayoral office an ignorant, racist, and possibly illiterate furniture salesman… Twice.
…or that time we voted in an ignorant, racist, spouse-abusing, homophobic, sexist drunk with a crack problem.
Simply being untrue could qualify as “bullshit”, but aren’t lies supposed to be internally consistent and stable over time?
Probably depends on how badly one wants to believe them
Who says it’s new?
And since he stands an increasingly good chance of becoming president, it’s worth it to some of us to compare notes while trying to comprehend him.
If you’re asking if attacking him/questioning him about that would be a gotcha question - no, it wouldn’t. Questioning people about terrible things they’ve actually said and advocated is the exact opposite of a gotcha question is the sort of things the media should be doing (although even then they seem to do their best to undermine their own points by doing it in the stupidest way possible… ugh, I swear to god they seem to want a President Trump sometimes)
Well, the fact that by nature of being a gotcha question it often proves ineffective at convincing people who aren’t convinced.
But that’s pretty irrelevant, since the question had nothing to do with the beliefs of the political candidate and everything to do with forcing him to badmouth his own supporters immediately before a primary. (despite the fact that every Republican candidate has or will, should they win the nomination, depend on those very same people for victory)
It’s less meaningful than the attacks on Obama in regards to the actions of reverend Wright, and that was already stupid.
Now, if they’d asked “these people are supporting you, why do you think they are or should?” - that could have highlighted the same issues more effectively without being a naked attempt to get Donald Trump to drive off his own voters.
Bullshit. Aside from the fact that he wasn’t “forced” to do anything, when candidates don’t renounce those who endorse them (not just express support), they basically declare their agreement with those endorsers because, based on the endorsers’ own expressed beliefs, they’re glad that the endorsers support what the candidate says and does.
When an avowed, unrepentant, nakedly reptilian white supremacist and for god’s sake, former KKK Grand Wizard, says he supports Trump, asking him to embrace or reject that endorsement is not an effort to get him to “badmouth his own supporters”; it’s an effort to find out whether he agrees with a man who espouses hatred for people who happen not to have been born white (kind of, you know, an important thing to know about a potential politician, let alone the president).
I remember how hard people on the right went after Obama about Rev. Wright, and Bill Ayers, people who (if I remember right) didn’t even actually “endorse” Obama, and people who were being caricatured by the right in an effort to smear Obama with something, anything. Somehow I’m really doubting you raised a similar stink about those more tenuous, LESS meaningful connections. Trump has regularly said things that resemble Duke’s beliefs – no caricatures necessary in both cases – and Obama did not regularly say things that resembled the SUPPOSED beliefs of Ayers and Wright. Your fallacious, specious comparison is fallacious and specious.
