Donald Trump - 'Phony Emoluments Clause'

[Sam]

The problem you're having, on this thread and the past one, is that you're jumping into the conversation with apparently no knowledge of the current situation, much less the larger context of how Trump speaks and acts. You're operating without information parity but want people to agree with your opinion, despite its foundation in ignorance and the underlying assumption that we're pretty much dealing with the same sort of situation here as with presidents past.

We are not.

The context surrounding Trump's "phony Emoluments Clause" statement, for example, isn't that he was going to provide access to Doral "for free" (that was an ad hoc promise that the Trump administration floated after the outrage started from Republicans and the first trial balloon ("at cost") didn't land). Neither is the context that Trump was calling the concern about the Emoluments Clause phony: his surrounding statements were 1) how great Doral is, 2) claiming falsely that Obama negotiated a book deal while in office, 3) George Washington ran a business while president.

Those taken together with the vast wealth of knowledge about Trump's foreign business dealings frame the context perfectly: Trump does not believe that he is bound in any way by the Emoluments Clause, giving it the same ignorant disregard he reportedly gives the entire framework. In a way, it's not his fault that aides have had to tell him he can't do illegal and unlawful things -- he's just a narcissistic, ignorant, incurious man whose brain has rotted out even further thanks to age, diet, and 24/7 cable news.

But what's our excuse?

So if you jump in here asserting that one news story and one video clip be taken in without context and that your opinion of the matter be understood as the objective one, despite lack of surrounding knowledge, what can a person do except tell you "No, you gotta pay more attention to this?"*

--Sam


*Old story from a friend about a potential client who walked into his law office angry. Angry Fella had a whole list of what he wanted Friend to do, why it had to be done, and how he was going to win in court. Friend listened calmly and then told Angry Fella that he could do none of that. When Angry Fella demanded an explanation, Friend replied "Well, because you're ignorant."

Angry Fella became angrier.

Friend went on to explain that everything he wanted done was not how the law worked and that no attorney who wanted to remain in the profession would do it. What Angry Fella needed, Friend said, was to learn about how the law worked first -- he had to understand the context around his issue so that he could understand his problem. Friend asked what Angry Fella did for work -- construction. Friend explained how he couldn't just go up to Angry Fella and demand he build a house without load-bearing walls or drainage pipes or whatever: a person building a house has to know all about how houses, buildings, things get built and what's feasible and doable. And when it comes to law, that's what a lawyer is for: to tell you what is feasible and doable in the full context of the law.

Angry Fella subdued significantly and became a client.

Sometimes, the piece of information you're missing is that you don't have enough information to form a good opinion of the issue. It's best to get that front-and-center sooner rather than later.

I'm seeing a pattern here, Sam.* I make a simple point, and you dance here and there and everywhere trying to evade it, instead of just granting it, even though granting it wouldn't hurt your case, and actually would enhance your credibility.


- Aren't we all biased in some way? Do any of us look at both sides of the American political 'battle' objectively? Perhaps we should be more aware of our own biases, and a little more charitable toward those we disagree with, and a little more skeptical of media pieces that suit our prejudices. Result - a long series of posts explaining how you aren't really that biased, and how I have to convince you that you are, and how I'm just being cynical towards politicians anyway (and you aren't then just being naive??). You could have just agreed that everyone has biases, and it pays to be aware of our own ones.


- Did Trump really say what the article claims he did? I argue in detail, with actual quotes from the clip of the interview, that it doesn't fairly represent what he said in the interview. Result - some other, related allegations about Trump; claims that the article should be interpreted in a wider context (not provided) as typical of Trump's behaviour on this topic (i.e. even if the article gives a false impression of what Trump did say at that time, never mind because we know he's like that anyway). The citations you give are not examples of Trump's responses to allegations of violation of the emoluments clause (which would be somewhat relevant) but more allegations.

Think about it: If someone posted a thread claiming that Sam thinks we should all eat only horsemeat to save the world from global warming, with an edited and out of context quote of you saying 'I love horses'; and I question that claim about you; and the poster responds with cites of other people claiming that is your typical response, how does that show that the initial claim is true? Adding in some cites of articles saying that 'horsemeat onlyists' are breaking the rules of good dietary and environmental science doesn't address the question.


Would granting that the article oxmixmudd cited is a misrepresentation of Trump mean that he hasn't broken the emoluments clause? Of course not. I'm NOT arguing that he hasn't broken the clause (or that he has). My point has only, and always been, that the article is 'fake news'. How hard is it for you to grant that?

Would granting that the article is a misrepresentation show that you're able and willing to evaluate data sources objectively, and treat Trump fairly? Yes. Why then is it so hard for you to do that?







* I can do the 'I'm superior to you' tone thing too. It's unhelpful and unpersuasive. Are you trying to win people to your views, or just trying to beat them in arguments on TWeb?

[Sam]

Given his propensity to boast and exaggerate as much as he does I wouldn't be surprised if he isn't as rich as he portrays himself as being.

Another thing to consider is that folks involved in politics are generally very careful about what they claim on their taxes. Few ever take every deduction that they may be entitled to because of optics. They don't want to be seen as not paying their "fair share" or taking advantage of questionable loopholes.

But Trump, like those of us not in elected office, surely sought out every deduction possible. IIRC, he once scoffed that it would have been foolish not to have done so.

So it would hardly come as a shock if there is some stuff in his tax returns that would be embarrassing for him now.

There have been at least two major investigative reports (NYT and ProPublica) indicating serious and serial criminal tax violations in Trump's tax returns. Embarrassing is the least of his worries.

[rogue06]

For sources you would consider conservative, probably. Wall street journal, but you probably think they're liberal. I certainly have no interest in right (or left) propaganda rags , except as entertainment.

How often do you go to answers in genesis for their take on the latest discovery as a primary information source?

Jim

The news section of the WSJ slants left but the opinion section is decidedly conservative.

As I've repeatedly noted, I consume news from a wide variety of sources with widely divergent POVs. And this is deliberate. I don't care to read or hear what one side claims that the other side is saying. I want to read or hear it for myself coming from them. That way you get the oft missed context. This can be seen when I post something that includes a lot of links. Generally they are overwhelmingly if not entirely from MSM news sources.

[oxmixmudd]

I was a bit taken aback to see MSNBC placed considerably to the right of The Washington Post and The Economist. Drudge being put well out to the right is another surprise since they're like a clearinghouse similar to Yahoo or Google News often linking to all of those listed as being liberal in the chart and even Vanity Fair, Rolling Stone, New Republic, Daily Kos, Mother Jones, Vox and Salon as well.

To follow this line a tad bit farther, this article looks at how people rate news organizations in terms of bias based on their own political leanings. The more positive the score, the less bias is perceived by the respondent.

https://www.businessinsider.com/most...to-fox-news-18

these three charts give a window into why you and MM are saying what you are saying:

composite:

DemocraticView.jpeg

How democrat or democrat leaning voters see it: (higher value equals the least bias, lower value indicates the most bias)

RepublicanView.jpeg

How republican or republican leaning voters see it:

RepublicanView.jpeg


Notice that for CNN, it fares reasonable well in the composite or democratic/democratic leaning, but for republican it is dead last.

And which one gets the most 'attention' from our President?


Jim

[rogue06]

There have been at least two major investigative reports (NYT and ProPublica) indicating serious and serial criminal tax violations in Trump's tax returns. Embarrassing is the least of his worries.

That would fall under "questionable loopholes."

Many seriously rich folk take advantage of obscure parts of tax code and interpretations of it that draw knee-jerk negative responses when brought under scrutiny but rarely are determined to be illegal.

[Mountain Man]

Says the man who only posts breitbart or similar sources.

Jim

I mainly do that to trigger snowflakes like you who can't stomach contrary facts and opinions. But then I remember that you have yet to show that any article I've posted from "Breitbart or similar sources" is factually incorrect.

[Sam]

That would fall under "questionable loopholes."

Many seriously rich folk take advantage of obscure parts of tax code and interpretations of it that draw knee-jerk negative responses when brought under scrutiny but rarely are determined to be illegal.

Have ... have you read the ProPublica piece?!

[Mountain Man]

...these three charts give a window into why you and MM are saying what you are saying...

What you fail to recognize, given your habitual lack of self-awareness and introspection, is that they also give a window into why you're saying what you're saying.

[oxmixmudd]

What you fail to recognize, given your habitual lack of self-awareness and introspection, is that they also give a window into why you're saying what you're saying.

I recognized it. Just didn't see an need to say anything to you since you already consider me horribly biased. The point then is that you need to try to understand your own. like that the republican bias table mirrors Donald Trumps Fake news accusations. Or that the republican list reflects an extreme paranoia of almost all news outlets and new outlet bias - with amazingly only fox and the wall street journal landing in the 'unbiased' block - uncannily paralleling the Presidents rhetoric.

Jim

[oxmixmudd]

I mainly do that to trigger snowflakes like you who can't stomach contrary facts and opinions. But then I remember that you have yet to show that any article I've posted from "Breitbart or similar sources" is factually incorrect.

MM - you're the one pretending nearly everything Trump does can be excused. And you're the one making personal accusations. I think that speaks for itself.

JIm

[lilpixieofterror]

No shame at all I see

There’s no more shame in calling you bias than there is is saying the sun is shining. ItÂ’s obvious to all, but you and anyone incline your support you.

I'm not calling you 'crazy' pix. I'm calling you out as focusing on the person - me - rather than the topic - Trumps comments about the Constitution. Which you ARE. I'm ALSO saying that in your rage you have dropped to the point you are making up things to accuse me of. Which you ARE. And I gave you SPECIFIC examples of when you did that. To be 'gaslighting' I'd need to be telling you things are NOT as the ARE. I'm not trying to make you THINK you are crazy pix. I'm trying to point out that you ARE posting irrationally, personally.

I have talked about the topic and you decided to whine and complain about this, but it all comes back to you and your extreme biasness and inability to judge Trump fairly and your judging anyone disagreeing with you as being too dumb to get it or too evil to care. There is no irrationally on my part, I have even pointed out that you’re clearly capable of making decent points against Trump, which proves there is zero anger or rage on my side, but plenty on yours. Sorry, just pointing out the obvious and you don’t like how I have pegged you so accurate and so well as unable to be rational on all things Trump.

And this is what I'm talking about. I don't know how evil Trump is relative to others. I do know there are pschologists that observing his behavior say he is a Narcissist and likely a Psychopath (no conscience). And that makes him very dangerous - as are ALL such people.

Funny, I can find people that said the same thing about whatever politician I disagreed with, but any professional that makes such bold claims, without doing clinical analysis should be laughed at and not taken seriously and I’m sure you well know that medical professionals shouldn’t engage in such idle speculation. You just don’t care because it tells you stuff you like hearing. Again, you prove me right and are too full of yourself to notice. Have said ‘experts’ done the proper work to prove any of this? Have they done the interviews? Have they done the clinical evaluations? If not, it’s their opinion and nothing more. You talk about morality and how Trump lacks it while using ‘experts’ that obvious lack medical ethics and try to tar a person, using their credentials to fool the gullible, to pass on their political opinions as medical science, when it isn’t. It’s true, the left does the very thing they condemn and don’t bat an eye doing it.

But what I also know is what he is doing and what he is saying, a large bit of which IS evil. When a person slams the personal appearance of another man's wife as part of a political race - that IS evil. When a man needs a 'fixer', a person to go behind him and clean up his moral messes, as Cohen was - that person IS evil and is so intent on doing evil to the point that he hires a person to try to make the consequences of the evil go away. When a man commits adultery and pays off the mistress, that IS evil. When a person continually lies about nearly everthing, that IS evil (and not entirely sane). We are talking about reality here, and your denials of it. But I don't think you are crazy, and I'm not trying to get you to think you are crazy.

I see lots of opinion and the judgmental attitude of a man that thinks he knows everything and thinks very highly of himself, but considering you try to use people that lack medical ethics to make your case, I’ll wait for you to show me a less bias source of information that isn’t based on biased opinions, the opinion of hacks, and backed by a person incapable of seeing beyond his own nose. I can make anyone look like evil incarnate, depending on what I chose to bring forth. It is easy, Trump is obviously a jerk, a loud mouth, and sticks his feet in his mouth, but I also know that the left is dedicated to destroying him and will do anything to make their dream a reality. Even if they have to lie, cheat, and steal to do so.

Again, there is more projection happening here than reality. I don't know why that is, but the facts about Trump are the facts. You, MM and some others are having a very hard time facing up to that reality. But the impeachment train is rolling, and the testimony of who Trump is and the sorts of things he's been doing behind the scenes as POTUS that are wrong and inappropriate, even illegal, are seeing the light of day. But I am sorry you are one of the millions he has duped into thinking rallying behind him will benefit you in some way.

I’ve seen this song and dance before and it seems to always fizzle out because the left is incapable of being objective and ends up goofing up and goofing up badly. If he is guilty, impeach him, but the left has cried wolf too many times to be believed by their mere word. Again, you’re way more emotionally invested in this than I am, you need Trump to be guilty to justify your anger and hatred. I don’t need him to be innocent because I don’t view him as the savior of America. There’s the difference between us, you’re emotionally invested and I’m not.

As Cohen said after being dropped like a hot potato and abandoned to what rightfully should have been Trump's fate

Source: cohen

"I did the same thing that you're doing now. For ten years. I protected Mr. Trump for ten years." His warning to them: "The more people that follow Mr. Trump -- as I did blindly -- are going to suffer the same consequences that I'm suffering."

© Copyright Original Source

Blah blah, no Jim I’m not ‘protecting him’ because I’m not emotionally invested as you are. I’m more than capable of seeing he has many warts, but you’re not capable of seeing past them and seeing there’s a man that does good and bad things, you can’t see past that and thus you’re whole problem. Either I am too stupid to understand and see what the great Jim sees or I’m too evil to care. There’s no in between. Just as I said. You need to stop proving me right. It gets tiring always being dead right, after awhile.

[One Bad Pig]

To follow this line a tad bit farther, this article looks at how people rate news organizations in terms of bias based on their own political leanings. The more positive the score, the less bias is perceived by the respondent.

https://www.businessinsider.com/most...to-fox-news-18

these three charts give a window into why you and MM are saying what you are saying:

composite:

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How democrat or democrat leaning voters see it: (higher value equals the least bias, lower value indicates the most bias)

[ATTACH=CONFIG]40404[/ATTACH]

How republican or republican leaning voters see it:

[ATTACH=CONFIG]40405[/ATTACH]


Notice that for CNN, it fares reasonable well in the composite or democratic/democratic leaning, but for republican it is dead last.

And which one gets the most 'attention' from our President?


Jim

Those charts don't even come close to passing the smell test. Most people (myself included) don't read nearly all of those sources - and even if they do, bias is a highly subjective measurement. Dollars to donuts, if they repeated the data collection, results would be wildly different (though Fox and CNN would be likely to anchor the ends because they're decried most stridently by the other side AFAICT).

[Sam]

Pew Research periodically puts out its Political Media Bias report and, from eyeballing the BI charts, looks more or less the same. The caveat is that Pew's report is from 2014 and the trend of people getting their news from online hubs like Facebook has only grown. What we can reliably say, though, is that such news consumption is even more walled-off from independent, objective sourcing than before, and even more prone to epistemic closure.

--Sam

PJ_14.10.21_mediaPolarization-01.jpg

PJ_14.10.21_mediaPolarization-08.jpg

[oxmixmudd]

Those charts don't even come close to passing the smell test. Most people (myself included) don't read nearly all of those sources - and even if they do, bias is a highly subjective measurement. Dollars to donuts, if they repeated the data collection, results would be wildly different (though Fox and CNN would be likely to anchor the ends because they're decried most stridently by the other side AFAICT).

This was based on how people regard media bias based on how they self identify. It's how they perceive the media source, not an attempt to objectively evaluate the media source.

It's accuracy depends to a large extent on the number of people polled and their distribution across the country.


Jim

[oxmixmudd]

Pew Research periodically puts out its Political Media Bias report and, from eyeballing the BI charts, looks more or less the same. The caveat is that Pew's report is from 2014 and the trend of people getting their news from online hubs like Facebook has only grown. What we can reliably say, though, is that such news consumption is even more walled-off from independent, objective sourcing than before, and even more prone to epistemic closure.

--Sam

[ATTACH=CONFIG]40411[/ATTACH]

[ATTACH=CONFIG]40412[/ATTACH]

What the internet allows for is complete insolation from opposing points of view. It also makes the cost of broadcasting information cheap, which often tends to translate to wildly inaccurate. Which is why I try to stick with sources that have some sort of track record and which adhere to time-honored standards for how the information is gathered and reported. Not a guarantee, but better than chaos or sources with wild known bias.


Jim