My Epic YouTube Exchange with MRA Thought Leader Karen Straughan
I’m always intrigued by people who are clearly intelligent but seem to use their intelligence in service of some point of view I wholeheartedly disagree with. I wouldn’t quite categorize Karen Straughan this way, at least not with regard to her critique of feminism (I agree with some of it), but her recent YouTube post that I would call “20 Points in Favour of Donald Trump” contained at least a few entries I found to be particularly wrongheaded.
Unsurprisingly, one of the entries I disagreed with related to Trump’s claims of voter fraud, which I’ve viewed as bogus from the start. In her “20 Points” post – which has been massively upvoted on one of Gad Saad’s YouTube videos – she wrote this sarcastically:
The man who told his supporters to vote in person so there’d be no cheating is trying to steal the election.
Her original post has over 300 replies too. Within those replies, she engages people with surprisingly fleshed out arguments. Uniquely, she’ll write YouTube comments containing 1000+ words like it’s no big deal. Some of her comments revealed that she seemed to have bought into the bogus claims of voter fraud being made by Trump, his followers, and the right-wing disinformation machine. So I told her what I thought of this:
@karen straughan I’ve always been impressed at your intellect, though it’s never convinced me of your worldview. However, when I read a comment like this I suspect you’re using your intelligence in service of a false narrative (i.e. the alleged voter fraud). I think you’re falling prey to motivated reasoning.
It may be difficult for you to evaluate right now, but I suspect in a few months you’ll see that you misjudged the credibility of Trump and his supporters’ claims of voter fraud. In the meantime, I found this video to be informative, and recommend it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ha7iWECm_8E&t=1457s
Straughan replied:
@Georges Prat I watch a number of Youtube lawyers on the regular, and I don’t know if I have words dismissive enough to describe their opinion of Legal Eagle’s legal acumen.
I’ve watched a few of his videos myself, and thought, “what the hell is he talking about?” That’s as a layperson who’s had to pick through a number of court transcripts, legal filings and court rulings in both Canada and the United States.
And don’t get me wrong. I don’t know how much fraud and shenanigans were going on.
At the same time, I’m sure there was fraud going on (there have already been charges brought against a social worker in Texas who illegally registered and then voted on behalf of 69 “enfeebled” persons in her care).
And I’m sorry, but you’re not going to convince me there’s nothing to see here when for half of Trump’s run for office, and nearly the entirety of Trump’s presidency, the Democrats were absorbed with factually flimsy and legally dubious attempts to oust him.
Crossfire Hurricane was bogus (and in my opinion, largely illegal), the Mueller Report appears to be nothing more than an expensive, 400 page justification as to why Crossfire Hurricane was not a giant mound of alpaca dung, and the impeachment was both factually and legally baseless.
And I’m not going by Fox New’s interpretation. I sat through hours and hours and hours of hearings, read huge swaths of declassified transcripts, read large portions of IG Horowitz’s and SC Mueller’s reports, and paid attention to things that happened that were barely reported on.
With a party that desperate to get rid of Trump, and who have duped half the electorate to believe he’s not only a criminal who got away with it, but literally Hitler? I would be very surprised if there were not a greater than normal amount of fraud going on.
Anyway, I’m planning on uploading a video in the next few days outlining what I’ve learned about Russia-gate and the Mueller Report. You know. If you’re interested.
This was my reply:
@karen straughan I can’t say with any certainty whether Legal Eagle was a decent lawyer, but the few videos I saw seemed legitimate. And where he does talk about law I know about, he gets it right. Regardless, I think we’ll increasingly see court cases demonstrating that the claims of voter fraud are baseless or very thin at best.
As for fraud, let’s be clear about what the claims are of Trump and his supporters. They’re alleging there’s been voter fraud on a large enough scale to have tipped the election in favour of Biden. I wouldn’t be surprised to find isolated incidences of fraud among some people acting alone, out of the 140+ millions of voters, whether Democrat or Republican. Statistically, that’s likely. But a large-scale, orchestrated conspiracy of voter fraud capable of flipping or adding tens of thousands of votes in favour of Biden? No way. It would’ve required too many people conspiring together to succeed.
I agree there’s hysteria about Trump from those who oppose him, but there’s always a limit to how far political opponents will go, even in the hyper-polarized (but still democratic) USA. For example, I don’t think it’s remotely probable that either party would use assassination as a political tool. Likewise, I don’t think the Democrats would cross the line of trying to steal an election through voter fraud. Even if they wanted to, they’d see it was strategically unsound to try. They’d get caught too easily.
I’m not sure what you mean about the Democrats being absorbed with factually flimsy and legally dubious attempts to oust Trump. Let’s separate the “resistance” Democrats from actual members of Congress. I agree the former obsessed with the idea he’d get removed from office. A friend of mine was all wrapped up in it, watching Rachel Maddow’s show religiously and telling me he thought Trump was a Russian agent. I thought he’d lost his mind. As for members of Congress, they weren’t responsible for Crossfire Hurricane, that was the FBI. From what I’ve seen, there’s little to support this was directed by the Democrats. That doesn’t mean the people investigating Trump couldn’t have been motivated by personal animus against him, but that’s difficult to know (I can’t read their minds and I’m unaware of statements supporting this). If you’re also referring to impeachment, that was an attempt by the Democrats to amplify Trump’s misbehaviour regarding Ukraine (and perhaps to protect one of their own) rather than any serious attempt at removing Trump. They knew they would never have the votes in the Republican-led Senate.
What I think you’re missing from your analysis is Trump’s own actions in constructing the voter fraud narrative. He claimed there was voter fraud in 2016, even after he won! He just didn’t like that Hillary had beaten him in the popular vote. He’s clearly a narcissist and has no problem lying; those are indisputable facts. It’s unsurprising he’d construct a narrative designed to protect his ego. As early as April 2020 he began claiming there would be voter fraud in the November election. They were baseless claims, as every expert said. He kept repeating it right up to election day and more. Throughout Trump’s presidency the conservative media has been all too happy to amplify his narratives, whether true or not, because they know it’s red meat to his supporters. The voter fraud “story” is no different.
Just ask yourself what’s more parsimonious:
(1) That the Democrats and DNC have such severe TDS that they created a vast conspiracy to win the election by voter fraud, and risk massive political and criminal consequences if caught; or
(2) That Trump, a known narcissist and liar, constructed a false narrative and repeated it often enough that media and supporters devoted to him believed it and spread it?
Trump’s done this sort of thing before, enabled by media sympathetic to him. Remember the caravan hysteria? https://www.bbc.com/news/av/world-us-canada-45942893
I am interested in your video. There’s few people on YouTube who would take the time to research an issue as deeply as you do, so I’ll be watching it.
Straughan had actually made two replies in a row to my original comment, and this was her second one:
@Georges Prat Oh, and just one more thing. You know how there was this big huge, $30m investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 election? And how the go-to theory among many was that Russian hackers and troll farms stole the election for Donald Trump?
The Media Research Center just conducted a poll of 1000 actual voters and found that 36% of Biden voters had not heard any reporting whatsoever on Joe Biden’s alleged corrupt business dealings with China (for which there is a plethora of solid, documentary evidence). 4.6% of people who had voted for Biden said that if they had known about that, they would not have voted for him. They’d have voted for Trump, or a third party candidate, or only voted down-ballot, or not voted at all.
Keep in mind, this is just the China allegations. There’s evidence of other hinky business dealings in other corrupt countries (Ukraine, Russia, Kazakstan).
If these voters are representative, social media’s active suppression of the NYPost’s articles on this topic, and the mainstream media’s refusal to pick up the story, prevented Biden from losing 46 of every 1000 voter.
If he’d lost 4.6% of his votes, Trump would likely have won with around 289 electoral votes.
I hope you find this as disturbing as I do.
Trump won 2016 with the spectre of Russia collusion hanging over his head. The media was giving that story everything it had, and it turned out to be bunkum.
Yet a Biden scandal breaking in the lead up to an election, with a ton of verifiable evidence? Between the tech giants and the mainstream media, they ensured Democrat voters would be under-informed or completely ignorant of it.
I wonder if the FEC would consider that an “in-kind” campaign donation?
This was my reply to the second comment:
@karen straughan I personally couldn’t say whether Russia had swayed the election towards Donald Trump. There were many competing plausible reasons for his success, none of which can be quantified easily.
Anyway, I’m not sure the evidence of Joe Biden’s corruption was all that strong. The most I saw was an email that mentioned a 10% stake in a deal with China “held by H for the big guy” that a former business partner of Hunter Biden said was a real email and the “big guy” was Joe. Even if Joe Biden was receiving this 10% stake, it’s still less evidence of Biden’s corruption than all the evidence of Trump’s corruption. I prefer the smaller crook.
Still, I agree the non-conservative press seemed pretty uninterested in the story, probably because they thought it would harm Biden’s chances of beating Trump. They were similarly uninterested in Tara Reade’s sexual assault allegations against Biden. Either way, there remains a robust pro-Trump, conservative press that was very effective in spreading plenty of negative stories about Biden.
If CNN, MSNBC, etc. are guilty of not telling their audiences about the Hunter Biden story, then Fox, The Blaze, conservative talk radio, etc. are equally guilty of their own biases, i.e. focusing on negative stories of Biden and not focusing on negative stories of Trump. In other words, the kind of analysis you’re making about how voters might have voted differently with more information can’t be made fairly if it’s made in a vacuum. Maybe a good chunk of voters were equally uninformed about Trump’s wrongdoings because they were busy watching Fox and Fox is just as guilty of journalistic malpractice as CNN, MSNBC, etc. (and Fox is at least as guilty as they are in this regard…).
As for 2016, again it’s difficult to know what variables helped Trump win, exactly (although studies like the one you cite about 2020 voters are a good start). It seems to me Hillary’s emails had a lot to do with her loss, which to me demonstrated the impressive effectiveness of conservative propaganda in the US. The Republicans leveraged Benghazi that way too. These Quora answers on Benghazi say it all, succinctly: https://www.quora.com/Why-is-Benghazi-a-big-deal
So I’m not sure it’s right to paint the media’s attention on the Trump-Russia story as unfair to Trump in 2016, unless you also take into account conservative media’s effective use of the Hillary emails story and the Benghazi story. All of these stories were talked about well out of proportion to their importance. In conclusion, I don’t find the statistics you cite disturbing.
What I find more disturbing is how former NYT editor Bill Keller suppressed a NYT story about NSA surveillance on Americans in 2004 because senior government officials told him not to publish it. With the Hunter Biden story, centrist/liberal media outlets decided it wasn’t newsworthy enough to publish about it but it got plenty of attention in conservative media anyway. With the 2004 NSA story the only media outlet that had knowledge of it didn’t publish about it because the government asked them not to. That means in 2004 a major story about government illegality was 100% suppressed until it got published over one year later, after George W. Bush’s re-election. Keller’s decision might well have swayed the election for Bush.
This was Straughan’s reply, which seemed to have been focused more on my first reply to her first comment:
@Georges Prat As far as fraud goes, we’ll have to see. There are several cities in the US with long histories of systemic corruption across the board including corruption of the electoral process (Chicago, Philadelphia, Pittsburg, Detroit).
And there have been instances of rule-breaking in some of those places. In Philadelphia, illegal signs were posted by Democrats outside polling stations. A small thing, and likely not to have much impact, BUT, done brazenly despite it being a crime.
Then there’s the matter of Michael Bloomberg paying off the fines and outstanding restitution of thousands of felons in Florida who had served their sentences but who were prevented from voting by those debts. He openly stated in the documentation around that campaign that he was restricting it specifically to demographics (mostly black people) who were more likely to vote Democrat. While it’s arguable whether what he did was technically vote-buying (which is illegal), since he didn’t tell these people they had to vote Democrat, it certainly qualifies as scummy election manipulation.
Keeping in mind that the democrats considered the Russian troll farms and the DNC email leaks to be election meddling.
Anyway, we will have to see. There’s enough shady behavior going on (including arrests for fraud) that the claims should be litigated and ameliorated to preserve the appearance of election integrity.
And the fact that the state officials involved are trying to prevent the audits and recounts that, if they’re on the up and up, would exonerate them? That’s a little hinky.
Anyway.
Impeachment was a project of a Democrat congress, both houses. I will likely be putting up a video on why I think that entire thing was a sham.
As for Democrat non-involvement in Crossfire Hurricane, Brady material unlawfully withheld from General Flynn for years, and then finally released to him when Bill Barr assigned a US attorney to look into the matter, reveals that at least in the case of Flynn, Barack Obama, Joe Biden and several senior officials in the administration were not only being briefed on the investigation, but were directing parts of it.
One of the most ironic things about that is that Biden suggested that incoming National Security Advisor Flynn could be pursued for violating the Logan Act. The Logan Act is a 1799 law prohibiting private citizens from acting as representatives of the US government when communicating with foreign officials.
During the transition, Flynn had taken calls from Russian Ambassador Kislyak, wherein he discussed certain aspects of Trump’s foreign policy platform and how they differ from Obama’s. See? A violation of the Logan Act. He was acting as a representative of the US government! (Just like Susan Rice and every member of Obama’s incoming administration did during their transition after Dubya. It’s completely commonplace, and in reality, if they weren’t doing it, they’d be derelict in their duty.)
Meanwhile, Biden, who has been named president elect by the media, not by any official certification of the election results, has been on the phone nonstop with foreign leaders, accepting congratulations and discussing his own foreign policy agenda. He hasn’t been officially declared president elect yet — as far as the law is concerned, he’s just a private citizen. And yet he’s acting as a representative of the US government when dealing with foreign officials. He’s in violation of the Logan Act!
Which just goes to show, if it weren’t for double standards, the Democrats would have no standards at all.
I replied as follows:
@karen straughan I wasn’t aware of this Michael Bloomberg story. It looks to me like a clear attempt at countering voter suppression, a well-documented Republican strategy aimed at disenfranchising black voters, because they know black Americans overwhelmingly vote Democrat. I assume you’re aware of that and how Jeb Bush’s efforts in that regard likely swayed the 2000 election in favour of George W. Bush.
Politics is dirty business, but for every instance of Democrats acting dishonourably, I find more instances of Republicans acting more dishonourably. That’s how I view these claims of voter fraud by all non-Trump Republican officials. They probably know better but figure they still need the support of the MAGA crowd, so they go with it. Meanwhile, they’re reinforcing a distrust in democracy among a solid majority of Republican voters at this point. This is a slope towards civil unrest.
As for whether Bloomberg’s actions could be viewed as vote buying, that’s an interesting legal question. I’m no expert in US criminal law, but instinctively I don’t think it would qualify.
I’m surprised you think impeachment was a sham. I read the transcript of the call between Trump and Zelensky; it seemed pretty clear to me Trump was trying to blackmail him. That seemed like an abuse of the president’s office by Trump because he threatened to use his power as president to withhold funds to Ukraine unless they gave him dirt on Joe Biden. That’s an impeachable offence. I’ll be interested to see why you disagree, if you end up making that video too.
I won’t comment further on Crossfire Hurricane. I only know the conventional story, and not too well anyway. I never followed it closely at the time because I found it tiresome. It’s clear you’ve taken a deeper dive into it than I have. If I’m wrong to have the conventional view on this, I’ll be interested to find out why.
Karen Straughan, in her endless patience, continued the exchange. Here, she starts to quote parts of my reply in hers:
@Georges Prat “I wasn’t aware of this Michael Bloomberg story. It looks to me like a clear attempt at countering voter suppression, a well-documented Republican strategy aimed at disenfranchising black voters,”
I don’t know whether I can continue to converse with you. Anything the Democrats do is benign in intent. “He was just correcting the suppression of the black vote!”
Why not pay off everyone’s fines then? Then you’re correcting the suppression of everyone’s vote.
“I’m surprised you think impeachment was a sham. I read the transcript of the call between Trump and Zelensky; it seemed pretty clear to me Trump was trying to blackmail him.”
From the testimony during the hearings, it would appear that what you read between the lines of that conversation (perhaps after being primed by how the media were spinning it) went right over Zelensky’s head at the time.
Zelensky took none of the actions Trump had requested as a favor. I expect it was because, like Trump, after winning on a “drain the swamp” platform, he’d inherited a swamp of corruption, and 3/4 of the people around him were working against him behind the scenes. Maybe he wanted to do it, maybe not, but it’s clear he didn’t do it.
Anyway, at the hearings the only US diplomat who claimed to have “first hand knowledge” of a quid pro quo arrangement was US Ambassador to the EU, Gordon Sondland. On cross examination, he amended his testimony to say that he had no evidence of that “other than my own presumption.”
Everyone else testified that a month after that phone call, and within 24 hours of an article being published in Politico to the effect that the Ukraine aid was on hold and “under review”, they got a flurry of texts, calls and emails from their Ukrainian counterparts asking what was going on. Was the aid in jeopardy? Did Ukraine need to do anything?
Sondland then “filled everyone in” on the quid pro quo he had first hand knowledge of (via his own presumption), and this was communicated to the Ukrainians, which put them into a tizzy. When Sondland finally deigned to directly ask Trump what he wanted in return, Trump said he wanted nothing.
So. The Ukrainians apparently felt the aid was a slam dunk until an article was published that it was under review. A bunch of diplomats, based on one person’s presumption and without ever consulting Trump, told them the aid was conditioned on certain requests Trump had made of them. When Trump was finally asked if the aid was conditional, he said no.
Anyone in the administration could tell you that Trump is no fan of foreign aid, and he’s a big fan of holding onto appropriated money right up until the disbursement deadline (there are good fiscal reasons for that). He did the exact same thing with aid to numerous other countries.
Now, let’s keep in mind one major player in this fiasco. John Bolton. Trump fired him as National Security Advisor, and there is no love lost between them. He offered to testify. It was known at the time that Bolton was writing a tell-all memoir, and the scuttlebutt was that it was none too kind toward Trump.
So Bolton says, “I’ll testify,” and congress doesn’t call him. As in, not only do they not subpoena him, they don’t invite him.
Why not? Bolton was there when all these decisions were being made? And he had reason to hate Trump and disagreed vehemently with Trump’s foreign policy.
Perhaps it was because Bolton was in the room when Trump asked his staff to explore the possibility of the promised Ukraine being funnelled through NATO, so that European countries with a greater interest in Crimea than the US has would have to chip in?
Bolton wrote disparagingly about this in his book. As in, “what a rube, thinking that this was the way to do things.” But it certainly provides an alternate explanation for the delay (that was not actually a delay) in deploying the aid to Ukraine.
And yes, this is the same John Bolton who told the media, “do you really think that if Trump had called the war dead losers and suckers in my presence, I wouldn’t have put it in my book?”
A war hawk, sure, but an honest one. Which is why he was never asked to testify, even after he volunteered.
Everything that was revealed in the impeachment hearings points to Trump being parsimonious, not corrupt. It all falls in line with his openly stated platform on foreign policy, which boils down to, “the US is not the global police force, and we’re not everyone’s uncle with an envelop full of cash to bail everyone out of their problems.”
There was literally no evidence other than imputations of intent (reading between the lines) of any quid pro quo, and all the evidence pointed to the fact that if there was, the Ukrainians — the people most likely to have noticed it — never noticed it.
So here we are. Trump asked Zelensky to do him a favor. Zelensky didn’t do it. Zelensky got his aid. There are innocent explanations for the delay. Any quid pro quo amounted to reading between the lines of a conversation, and imputing malicious intent on Trump for things he never said, but which people assumed he meant.
In other words, a sham.
The saga continues with my reply:
@karen straughan I didn’t say anything the Democrats do is benign in intent, nor that Bloomberg’s strategy to pay off the debts of black voters in Florida was benign. In fact, I wrote politics is dirty business, which was implicitly acknowledging that his actions are part of that.
I think you missed a bigger implicit point when I wrote that Bloomberg was countering a Republican strategy to disenfranchise voters, which is that efforts to undo one dirty trick by one side might involve dirty tricks by the other side. Two wrongs don’t make a right, but it’s perfectly understandable that this would happen. Dirty political tricks lead to a race to the bottom, because the other side doesn’t want to tie its hands behind its back in response to them. So if one side starts gerrymandering, you’d expect the other side to do it too. Frankly, it would be irrational of them to take the high road and just get defeated because of it.
I actually find it surprising that you judge the Democrats to be the main purveyors of political dirty tricks. As mentioned before, I find the Republicans to be worse in this regard. Voter suppression is a dirtier tactic than paying off the debt of otherwise disenfranchised black voters, in my estimation. It certainly seems more widespread. But anyway, the reason it surprises me is that I constantly see examples of Democrats failing to meaningfully resist the Republicans when the Republicans are up to no good. My lefty friends are always complaining about this, and I keep telling them “it’s because the Democrats are right-wing, they’re just not far right like the Republicans”. That might seem outlandish to you because I’m not sure what your prior beliefs are in this regard. But when I say “right-wing” I mean the Democrats are in support of corporate interests and wall street (I’m excluding woke politics from this assessment).
I wasn’t primed by what the media said about the Zelensky call. I just listened to it and read the transcript, and was able to read between the lines like anyone can. Of course Zelensky later denied it, he has to maintain decent diplomatic relations with the Trump administration.
I thought Bolton didn’t testify because the trial took place in the Republican controlled Senate, and they blocked any testimony from being heard. Heck, they wanted to have a summary trial, i.e. basically done with paper on both sides, so they could go straight to acquitting him. Are you sure it was the Democrats who didn’t want to call Bolton?
Straughan wrote her final reply. By now, she had lost patience:
@Georges Prat “I didn’t say anything the Democrats do is benign in intent, nor that Bloomberg’s strategy to pay off the debts of black voters in Florida was benign.”
I invite you to go back and read what you wrote. I think we’re done here. You are obviously open to considering certain actions by certain people in their most charitable light.
As for your implicit points, I am growing increasingly frustrated by your “implications”. If you want to say something, say it. Don’t imply it.
“As mentioned before, I find the Republicans to be worse in this regard.”
Yes, you’ve made your bias very clear.
“I just listened to it and read the transcript, and was able to read between the lines like anyone can.”
Everyone but Zelensky, apparently.
I think we’re done here.
You are literally laying claim to mind-reading ability. You read between the lines of Bloomberg’s borderline illegal actions and said, “well, he was probably correcting an injustice.”
You read between the lines of a phone call Trump declassified and released with full confidence it would exonate him, and came up with all kinds of things he didn’t say (or even imply).
I don’t think we can have a good faith conversation. Bloomberg literally said in his promotional materials that the reason he was paying off these debts for blacks was because blacks vote Democrat. NOT because they’ve been historically disenfranchised. But because they vote Democrat.
Meanwhile, you’re like, “anyone could read between the lines of what Trump said, even though every piece of evidence shows that the intended recipients of that alleged implicit message were clueless for a month and then clued in by someone who had zero first hand knowledge of Trump’s intentionsAnyeay.
Anyway, I don’t think I can stand this conversation anymore.
Have a nice day.
And of course, I couldn’t leave well enough alone. I always want the last word:
@karen straughan I went back to read what I wrote, and it was as follows:
“I wasn’t aware of this Michael Bloomberg story. It looks to me like a clear attempt at countering voter suppression, a well-documented Republican strategy aimed at disenfranchising black voters, because they know black Americans overwhelmingly vote Democrat. I assume you’re aware of that and how Jeb Bush’s efforts in that regard likely swayed the 2000 election in favour of George W. Bush.
Politics is dirty business, but for every instance of Democrats acting dishonourably, I find more instances of Republicans acting more dishonourably…”I replied that I was implicitly acknowledging that this strategy by Bloomberg was dirty, but in fact I was pretty explicit. It’s right there in the text. I preferred saying I had implied it than accusing you of failing to read or of knowing my motives.
At no point did I say Bloomberg is a magnanimous billionaire, nor did I deny he targeted black felons this way for nakedly partisan reasons. If you’re such a fan of explicit language, don’t accuse me of implicitly whitewashing Bloomberg’s actions when I never did. For the record, I have a very low opinion of Bloomberg.
I brought up voter suppression by the Republicans because these kinds of issues can’t be analyzed in a vacuum. I keep making this point but I’m not sure if you understand it. It’s simple: politics is about comparisons, especially in a two-party system. It’s misleading to say “look at the bad thing the Democrats did!” as an argument against the Democrats if the Republicans do the same bad thing, but are even worse about it.
As for your critique that I’m not sufficiently explicit, this is silly. It’s impossible to always know when someone you’re communicating with understands the arguments embedded in the statements you make. If you write in a way where every last point is explicit, it just ends up looking weird. If I write “Socrates is mortal because he’s human”, I shouldn’t need to add “humans are mortal” to make you understand what I’m saying. But if I find out you missed a point, I can clarify it. What’s wrong with that?
With regard to the Trump-Zelensky transcript, I actually re-read it today and found it less convincing than previously. I think the first time around I had read an abridged version that highlighted only the bits supporting the allegation of Trump’s quid pro quo.
I’m not claiming to be a mind reader. Sheesh! I’m just evaluating evidence differently than you. You seem persuaded of Trump’s innocence because Zelensky said he thought there was nothing wrong with the call. I’m saying it doesn’t convince me because Zelensky would have a very obvious reason to say that. I don’t know what’s in his head, I just know whether that argument is persuasive to me, and it isn’t for the reason I’ve already stated. Having re-read the transcript, now I think it’s also possible he’s a genuine fan of Trump. That’s also not an attempt at mind reading, that’s an inference I’m drawing from how he spoke to Trump in very positive terms in the call.
Similarly, I don’t find the fact Trump released the transcript of the call to be convincing evidence that nothing was wrong with the call. He could easily have done that for strategic reasons, like when he kept telling people to “read the transcript”, something he probably calculated his supporters wouldn’t do (because Americans don’t read, and his supporters are a less educated slice of them, and even if they did read it they’d probably think there was no problem because that’s what they’d want to believe). This also isn’t mind reading.
I find it interesting that you call me biased. I don’t deny it because everyone is biased and it would be foolhardy to think otherwise. But I try to be fair-minded. At numerous points in this exchange I’ve mentioned or conceded wrongdoing by Democrats (e.g. Joe Biden may well be corrupt, Bloomberg was using dirty political tactics).
By contrast, I haven’t found you to do the same. What I perceive from you instead is a narrow focus on the sins of Democrats combined with a narrow focus on Trump’s good policies. I see you failing to look at things in context, or making meaningful comparisons when they’re warranted. It’s all one-sided with you. If I’m wrong, by all means correct me. But it looks like extreme bias to me.
I still maintain that three, six, or maybe twelve months from now you’ll look back and realize you were wrong about voter fraud. Unless, of course, you again use your intellect in service of more mental gymnastics.
Anyway, I’m sorry to have annoyed you into silence.
