TV news is dropping the ball on Trump

[Bob78164]

According to this story, Trump is unique among major party candidates in his willingness to continue repeating false claims after the media has debunked them. One problem, though. He repeats them on TV news after they've been debunked, and the hosts aren't prepared to (or simply don't) challenge him on them.

It's a lot easier to be a serial liar if the people giving you a megaphone don't bother to call you out on it. --Bob

[Estonut]

According to this story, Trump is unique among major party candidates in his willingness to continue repeating false claims after the media has debunked them. One problem, though. He repeats them on TV news after they've been debunked, and the hosts aren't prepared to (or simply don't) challenge him on them.

It's a lot easier to be a serial liar if the people giving you a megaphone don't bother to call you out on it.

Exactly the same is true of Hillary.

[jarnon]

According to this story, Trump is unique among major party candidates in his willingness to continue repeating false claims after the media has debunked them. One problem, though. He repeats them on TV news after they've been debunked, and the hosts aren't prepared to (or simply don't) challenge him on them.

It's a lot easier to be a serial liar if the people giving you a megaphone don't bother to call you out on it.

Exactly the same is true of Hillary.

Not exactly the same, if you believe PolitiFact:

Hillary Clinton's file:
  True         44
  Mostly true    52
  Half true      42
  Mostly false    31
  False         22
  Pants on Fire    3

Donald Trump's file:
  True           3
  Mostly true      9
  Half true       21
  Mostly false     20
  False          60
  Pants on Fire    26

[Bob78164]

According to this story, Trump is unique among major party candidates in his willingness to continue repeating false claims after the media has debunked them. One problem, though. He repeats them on TV news after they've been debunked, and the hosts aren't prepared to (or simply don't) challenge him on them.

It's a lot easier to be a serial liar if the people giving you a megaphone don't bother to call you out on it.

Exactly the same is true of Hillary.

What false statements has Secretary Clinton repeatedly made that TV news has failed to call her on?

This meme that Secretary Clinton is dishonest seems to be the result of a decades-long Swiftboating campaign against her. She's made her share of errors (excusable and otherwise) during her years of public service. But I really don't think the factual record supports a claim that she's any less honest than any other politician.

Trump, on the other hand, is uniquely unfit for the Presidency. Unlike every other major party candidate that I can think of, and certainly unlike any other major party nominee, Trump has condoned and even encouraged physical violence against his political opponents, going so far as to offer to pay their legal fees. I've said it before and I'll say it again. If my party were ever idiotic enough to select a candidate who did that as its nominee, I'd vote for the Republican because my country is more important to me than my party. And it looks like a lot of Republicans (though not senior office holders such as John McCain) feel the same way. --Bob

[flockofseagulls104]

What false statements has Secretary Clinton repeatedly made that TV news has failed to call her on?

This meme that Secretary Clinton is dishonest seems to be the result of a decades-long Swiftboating campaign against her. She's made her share of errors (excusable and otherwise) during her years of public service. But I really don't think the factual record supports a claim that she's any less honest than any other politician.

Oh yeah, the vast right wing conspiracy! That's the ticket.

What false statements has Secretary Clinton repeatedly made that TV news has failed to call her on?

(Disclaimer: I disagree with just about everything Hillary Clinton supports or opposes, so it makes no difference to me what she lies about and what she doesn't. She and her opponent for the Dem nomination are probably the only two people on earth that would get me to cast a vote for Donald Trump. But these things she lies about should be of concern to you, since she's likely your girl, yet you dismiss them as a swift boat campaign, in much the same way the Trump-heads disregard his obvious lies. Do me a favor, don't respond to cite refutations to these lies. I've lived through the 2 Clinton admins, and I know and remember. But you can rely on the professional deniers if you want and keep your head in the sand. )

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-dY77j6uBHI
http://www.politifact.com/personalities ... ing/false/
http://www.thepoliticalinsider.com/t-da ... y-clinton/
http://www.breitbart.com/big-government ... ions-lies/
http://www.wnd.com/2015/05/here-they-ar ... dals-ever/

I could go on and on, but what's the point? I'm not trying to convince you of anything. You know all this stuff, but you continue to take her seriously because, I suspect, you consider republicans to be your enemy, just as she does, and has repeatedly said for the record.

[themanintheseersuckersuit]

According to this story, Trump is unique among major party candidates in his willingness to continue repeating false claims after the media has debunked them. One problem, though. He repeats them on TV news after they've been debunked, and the hosts aren't prepared to (or simply don't) challenge him on them.

It's a lot easier to be a serial liar if the people giving you a megaphone don't bother to call you out on it. --Bob

"Just think of them as Democratic operatives with bylines and it all makes sense"

[themanintheseersuckersuit]

http://twitchy.com/twitchys-3831/2016/0 ... ever-told/

[Estonut]

This meme that Secretary Clinton is dishonest seems to be the result of a decades-long Swiftboating campaign against her.

If by Swiftboating campaign, you mean people digging up previous recordings of her and using them against her, then yes, that is what is happening.

[BackInTex]

It's a lot easier to be a serial liar if the people giving you a megaphone don't bother to call you out on it. --Bob

Taking a page from the Democrat party. I told you he was a Democrat.

[BackInTex]

According to this story, Trump is unique among major party candidates in his willingness to continue repeating false claims after the media has debunked them. One problem, though. He repeats them on TV news after they've been debunked, and the hosts aren't prepared to (or simply don't) challenge him on them.

It's a lot easier to be a serial liar if the people giving you a megaphone don't bother to call you out on it.

Exactly the same is true of Hillary.

Not exactly the same, if you believe PolitiFact:

Hillary Clinton's file:
  True         44
  Mostly true    52
  Half true      42
  Mostly false    31
  False         22
  Pants on Fire    3

Donald Trump's file:
  True           3
  Mostly true      9
  Half true       21
  Mostly false     20
  False          60
  Pants on Fire    26

Fixed it for you

[silverscreenselect]

Not exactly the same, if you believe PolitiFact:

Hillary Clinton's file:
  True         44
  Mostly true    52
  Half true      42
  Mostly false    31
  False         22
  Pants on Fire    3

Donald Trump's file:
  True           3
  Mostly true      9
  Half true       21
  Mostly false     20
  False          60
  Pants on Fire    26

Fixed it for you

Republicans don't like Politifact because it's got a nasty habit of actually checking up on the accuracy of statements they make, unlike Fox News which merely serves as a very large method of spreading the right wing gospel.

Politifact has continually held Democrats and other liberals' feet to the fire about incorrect statements they've made, including Clinton and Sanders in the recent election season. And they do extensive research in efforts to determine the veracity of each individual claim.

Please give an example of a case in which you believe Politifact has erred.

[silverscreenselect]

Oh yeah, the vast right wing conspiracy! That's the ticket.

What false statements has Secretary Clinton repeatedly made that TV news has failed to call her on?

Most of your "statements" are either disagreements with Hillary's political positions, which are elevated to the status of falsehoods because some right wing commentator disagrees with them or the rehashing of in some cases decades old unfounded charges, dating back to the Vince Foster days. In your (and your fellow right wingers') logic, the failure of any prosecutor, including many Republicans, to actually call the Clintons to account on these charges is either a cover-up by those friendly to the Clintons or undue pressure against those unfriendly to them. It's the same logic that people use to claim that everything from the JFK assassination to the moon landing was a conspiracy or cover-up.

There are dozens of FBI agents investigating the Clinton e-mails, and the FBI is headed by a Republican. It took them one week to catch the Boston bombers in an entire city and crowd worth of potential suspects. If there was something in the Clinton e-mails that warranted charges, don't you think they would have found it by now. Or do you really think that a Hillary Clinton who was careless enough to take office e-mails home with her suddenly became a sophisticated enough computer genius to completely hide an incriminating trail from the eyes of the FBI?

[Bob78164]

As the New York Times puts it, [rul=http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/13/opini ... .html?_r=0]all politicians lie. Some lie more than others[/url].

But this discussion misses my point, which was much more specific. What I said is that Trump gets away with his lies on television news because unprepared (or unwilling) hosts don't call him on them when they have him on camera. That doesn't happen with Secretary Clinton, or with any of the other candidates. That needs to change. --Bob

[flockofseagulls104]

What I said is that Trump gets away with his lies on television news because unprepared (or unwilling) hosts don't call him on them when they have him on camera. That doesn't happen with Secretary Clinton, or with any of the other candidates. That needs to change.

Bob, the way I see it is that when Hillary deigns to be interviewed, and the chosen MSM news readers dare to ask HRC a hardball question, which isn't often, it is staged so that she can give her tested answer, and NEVER followed up on or challenged.

But I agree with you about the way the MSM handled Trump, because once they saw there was a chance, they WANTED him to get the nomination. He is a ratings goldmine, attracting those that love him and those that hate him. And they didn't want to become one of his targets. That is the way our MSM serves us these days.

[themanintheseersuckersuit]

They asked Trump how he was going to pay for his wall.
Still waiting for them to ask Ms. Clinton where she was going to get the 30 billion she promised the coal miners in West Virginia

[Bob78164]

They asked Trump how he was going to pay for his wall.
Still waiting for them to ask Ms. Clinton where she was going to get the 30 billion she promised the coal miners in West Virginia

Again, different point. Trump is getting away with repeating objective claims that have already been shown to be demonstrably false because TV news isn't calling him on them. Neither of your examples fits that paradigm. --Bob

[Bob78164]

What I said is that Trump gets away with his lies on television news because unprepared (or unwilling) hosts don't call him on them when they have him on camera. That doesn't happen with Secretary Clinton, or with any of the other candidates. That needs to change.

Bob, the way I see it is that when Hillary deigns to be interviewed, and the chosen MSM news readers dare to ask HRC a hardball question, which isn't often, it is staged so that she can give her tested answer, and NEVER followed up on or challenged.

But I agree with you about the way the MSM handled Trump, because once they saw there was a chance, they WANTED him to get the nomination. He is a ratings goldmine, attracting those that love him and those that hate him. And they didn't want to become one of his targets. That is the way our MSM serves us these days.

I'm asking for specifics here. What demonstrably false factual claim has Secretary Clinton repeatedly made on TV news without getting challenged on it? --Bob

[Bob78164]

Not exactly the same, if you believe PolitiFact:

Hillary Clinton's file:
  True         44
  Mostly true    52
  Half true      42
  Mostly false    31
  False         22
  Pants on Fire    3

Donald Trump's file:
  True           3
  Mostly true      9
  Half true       21
  Mostly false     20
  False          60
  Pants on Fire    26

Fixed it for you

You don't just get to disbelieve inconvenient facts. Refute them, if you can. If you believe that PolitiFact is giving undeserved ratings, please provide at least one example to get things rolling. --Bob

[flockofseagulls104]

If you believe that PolitiFact is giving undeserved ratings, please provide at least one example to get things rolling.

Bob, with examples like this, rated 'Mostly True', I think this list you give is ridiculous. It is cherry picked and juvenile.

"Hillary Clinton won "health care for 8 million children."

Is this what you present as evidence? Give me a break.

[silverscreenselect]

If you believe that PolitiFact is giving undeserved ratings, please provide at least one example to get things rolling.

Bob, with examples like this, rated 'Mostly True', I think this list you give is ridiculous. It is cherry picked and juvenile.

"Hillary Clinton won "health care for 8 million children."

Is this what you present as evidence? Give me a break.

Since Politifact writes articles about particular statements made by people, it's obviously a selected list in regard to any politician. But they have investigated 194 different statements by Hillary Clinton. That's an awful lot of cherries to pick. And you would think, if Politifact were in the tank for Hillary or the Democrats or liberals in general, that their statements would get true ratings a much higher percentage of the time, say 80-90%.

Here's their article about Hillary "winning healthcare" for eight million children with the CHIP program.

http://www.politifact.com/colorado/stat ... ers-claim/

After analyzing and researching Clinton's claim, Politifact concluded:

That statement is largely accurate. Clinton was key to creating the Children’s Health Insurance Program, which provides coverage for 8 million children. But the ad leaves out the contributions of others.

Because of that caveat, we rate her statement Mostly True.

According to the Kaiser Family Foundation, a leading non-partisan authority on healthcare matters:

[M]ore than 8 million low-income children were covered by CHIP at some point during 2012... From 1997, when CHIP was enacted, to 2012, the uninsured rate for children fell by half, from 14% to 7%.

http://kff.org/medicaid/issue-brief/the ... h-tell-us/

If you have a contrary set of facts, either about the effectiveness of the CHIP program or Clinton's role in getting the legislation passed, please present it.

[Bob78164]

If you believe that PolitiFact is giving undeserved ratings, please provide at least one example to get things rolling.

Bob, with examples like this, rated 'Mostly True', I think this list you give is ridiculous. It is cherry picked and juvenile.

"Hillary Clinton won "health care for 8 million children."

Is this what you present as evidence? Give me a break.

You're not Donald Trump. You don't get to get away with name-calling.

Please provide facts to refute the rating, if you can, or acknowledge that you cannot do so.

And again, this is beside the point. The point is that Donald Trump is being treated differently, particularly by television interviewers, because they're not calling him out on repeated statements that have already been shown to be false. Notwithstanding your effort to shift the debate to Secretary Clinton (who has a much better record of honesty than Donald Trump), that's the issue I'm raising. In other words, Donald Trump is getting away with bald-faced lies because TV news either isn't doing its homework or doesn't want to confront him.

Do you have any evidence to refute my point? --Bob

[flockofseagulls104]

who has a much better record of honesty than Donald Trump

Is there a scale for honesty? In my humble opinion, either you are honest or you are a liar. I am not contesting that Trump is a pathological liar. But, tell me, Bob, what lies are better than others? Does Hillary tell better lies than Trump? Is it a matter of quantity or quality? Hillary Clinton has a several decades long documented record of gross dishonesty, and is dishonest even when there is no logical reason for her to be dishonest, as does her husband. If Hillary hasn't been the recipient of hundreds of passes from the MSM, she would have no basis for running for President, if not being in jail already.

Or do we need to be concerned about what the meaning of 'is' is?

[Bob78164]

who has a much better record of honesty than Donald Trump

Is there a scale for honesty? In my humble opinion, either you are honest or you are a liar. I am not contesting that Trump is a pathological liar. But, tell me, Bob, what lies are better than others? Does Hillary tell better lies than Trump? Is it a matter of quantity or quality? Hillary Clinton has a several decades long documented record of gross dishonesty, and is dishonest even when there is no logical reason for her to be dishonest, as does her husband. If Hillary hasn't been the recipient of hundreds of passes from the MSM, she would have no basis for running for President, if not being in jail already.

Or do we need to be concerned about what the meaning of 'is' is?

Of course there are degrees of dishonesty. And if you're applying an absolute measure, no politician anywhere has ever passed your purity test, and none ever will.

Secretary Clinton (and almost every other politician of both parties) is different in kind from Donald Trump in that almost any other politician, when called on a false statement, will stop making it. Not so for Trump.

And both quality and quantity of lies matter. "We should go to war because we know Saddam has weapons of mass destruction and we know where he's keeping them" is a much worse lie than "They were shooting at me on the tarmac" (or whatever then-Senator Clinton said about that incident). I believe Donald Trump would deliberately lie to the American people in order to manufacture political support for whatever policy actions he feels like taking. That's not something I believe about any of his present and past opponents, in either party (except Carly Fiorina, who continued to repeat her whoppers about Planned Parenthood), even though Senator Cruz's PolitiFact ratings, compared to almost anyone else, really suck. --Bob

[flockofseagulls104]

Bob, here we go again. All I can say is I agree with you about Trump. The Main Stream News Media has done what it always does concerning him. No one wants to ask him direct questions and challenge him about specifics, because they want to keep access with him. And they gave him extensive free publicity because of the ratings he produced. On that we can agree. The big difference is his branding. He is bad to the MSM. HRC will never be bad. She is the smartest woman in the world.

As for your defense of HRC, I totally disagree with you. She has benefitted immensely from the MSM throughout her life. Just the fact that she can run for public office after all the scandals she is connected with AND still have a positive image with people like you is puzzling to me. That someone like you can give her a pass for all her blatant lies is troubling to me, but it is what it is. As for the ONE example you give: If someone claims that she was shot at repeatedly in front of the world when there is irrefutable proof that it is a lie makes me question that person's sanity. And has she offered any explanation for that? And that is one of the smaller whoppers she is involved with. The double standard about the people who have accused her husband of rape, after it was proven he blatantly lied about Lewinsky? The constantly changing stories about her emails? Her paranoia about people who disagree with her that is reminiscent of what Nixon was accused of? Her claim that she was broke after they left the White House? The story about the Benghazi video? Lying to the Benghazi families? None of that troubles you?

But I'm not going to convince you, and I am not going to try. After all, WHAT DIFFERENCE AT THIS POINT DOES IT MAKE.

[silverscreenselect]

Just the fact that she can run for public office after all the scandals she is connected with AND still have a positive image with people like you is puzzling to me.

Perhaps because these "scandals" are a collection of untruths, half truths, rumors, gossip, and speculation that the right wing talk media circuit refuses to let go of after a quarter of a century. With all the enemies that the Clintons have made over the years, many of whom are Republican elected or appointed law enforcement officials and prosecutors, don't you think that somewhere, just one of them would be itching to take down the Clintons over the years and actually filed charges if there was anything to any of these scandals?

It's ironic that the first lie you mention, the one about being shot at was actually debunked rather extensively, thoroughly, and promptly by the mainstream media. And in the grand scheme of things it was a fairly harmless form of puffing. As Bob said, if all politicians who lied or exaggerated were disqualified for office, we wouldn't have anyone since possibly George Washington holding elected office in the country today.