This.
Have they?
Who?
I googled and found a bunch of left-leaning sources claiming that Fauci is a target somehow, but I’ve not heard anyone say anything particularly bad about him. I’ve not read them all but the closes thing I found to a source was a quote from Tucker Carlson that didn’t really say anything bad at all about him. It just noted he’s not an economist or an American in danger of losing his income.
That’s a fair criticism, and the type of economy vs. viral risk mitigation discussion that’s absolutely necessary.
Am I missing something, or are you guys just latching on to a narrative that’s being spun?
As another example, I’m reading all about how Trump is saying to inject disinfectant. National news is reporting this as fact. I read the quote. Trump didn’t say anything like that, and no reasonable adult would come to that conclusion. Yet here we are, with a narrative in full force that Trump is suggesting people inject disinfectant.
EDIT: Okay I just got done reading the New York Time’s piece claiming Fauci is a target of the hard right. Who is the “hard right” in this article. Twitter accounts.
Same shit, different day. Tweets aren’t news.
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Just stop. Trump followed a presentation on certain treatments on hard surfaces (bleach, disinfectant, how long it takes with each one to kill the virus, etc.) and Trump piggybacked off of it to suggest we should look into into getting these disinfectants into the body, possibly by injection. He didn’t specifically encourage individuals to do it, but the mere suggestion of it was lunacy and irresponsible.
He said it, there’s no spinning it.
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People who pushed “is Fauci a democrat” to the top of google search suggestions, for example.
Of course you can spin it. It’s been being spun all day today, which is how you end up with people believing the president is suggesting you inject disinfectant. It’s all over facebook right now. Some of it is pretty funny, but it doesn’t mean it is grounded in truth.
It wasn’t a very well-stated question, but the fact remains he was asking a question. A stupid question, but if you believe this quote is instructing Americans to inject disinfectant I’m not sure what else there is to discuss
"And is there a way we can do something like that by injection inside, or almost a cleaning? Because you see it gets inside the lungs and it does a tremendous number on the lungs, so it would be interesting to check that.”
The height of pedantics Trump supporters will go to to clean up his messes are stratospheric, but regardless - I haven’t seen a single person say Trump instructed anyone to do anything. What he did do is suggest it should be looked into as a viable option - and the absurdity and idiocy of such a suggestion should be disqualifying for the job, even if zero people acted on it thinking it was a recommendation.
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I’ve got no problems providing examples for my points. I’m not sure why others seem to be so averse, but I suppose some people prefer their narratives.
My sister-in-law just shared this. It is right in the headline.
Plenty of other news stories popping up making the exact same specific claim.
Back on thread-topic, this really reminds me of the “White Supremacy is on the Rise”.
We had a whole thread about it and IIRC two examples were given. Someone brought up anti-illegal immigration flyers on a college campus and the other example was the individual person who plowed his car into other people.
Now, get on twitter and I’m sure you can find all kinds of people making all kinds of claims.
Is that newsworthy? I don’t think so, but the NYT, Washington Post and many other people seem to believe so.
Hey, notice something about the headlines you cited? They say he suggested injection - which he did. Hoisted by your own pedantic petard.
Oh, semantic quibbling now. You’re a lawyer, right?
“Please don’t put bleach inside yourself like the president says”.
How else should those words be interpreted? Would my choice of the word “instruct” not be a synonym for “say”, in this kind of context?
Furthermore, going back to the actual quote, is asking a question now the same thing as making a suggestion?
Do you consider this good, accurate reporting?
The problem with trump is you can’t take him literally. His supporters and administration say this all the time. So, the press, and public have to interpret and infer what he means.
FYI trump is now claiming he was sarcastic when he made those comments. Not that he was misquoted. He jokingly offered up poison as a solution to the pandemic.
Curiously, on a non-curved scale, what letter grade would you give trump for that press conference?
Your first article is an opinion piece - it isn’t reporting. You understamd the difference, or no?
The other headlines you posted verbatim:
Donald Trump suggests injecting people with ‘DISINFECTANT’ and hitting ‘the body with a very powerful light’ could kill coronavirus in bizarre White House briefing outburst
Trump suggests ‘injection’ of disinfectant to beat coronavirus and ‘clean’ the lungs
Literally true and accurate reporting.
I’m all set with semantic quibbling. I made my point and backed it up with examples.
From a quick google. And I’m sure plenty of others are out there. Just tweets is fine if it’s average Joes. It means more if it’s people with a lot of followers. Tweeting is communication and that’s why the President does it so often. I don’t understand the idea that tweets aren’t news. Is it somehow less important if the President tweets something than says it? Communicating via social media is worth reporting on.
But Faucci was given a security detail. No one had a problem with him initially. But the moment he questioned Trump or appeared to contradict him it was game over for him. That was my point. Government officials who do what Trump wants with no questions are praised. Those that don’t (even for a second apparently) are vilified and deep state plants. And why wouldn’t they? Trump called the state department the deep state department. It’s all good if they are agreeing with what he wants all the time. You’re fine if that is the case.
“A Deep-State Hillary Clinton-loving stooge,” read a Saturday headline on the American Thinker”
“Guy was a Hillary mole,” pro-Trump podcaster Bill Mitchell tweeted on Monday.“
“Disrespectful,” read a Monday headline on the right-wing Gateway Pundit, comparing Fauci to ousted general Stanley McChrystal.
Well, no you didn’t, but now your boy is countering the counternarrative being spun by folks like you - saying it was now all sarcasm! Somehow, some way, in the midst of crisis management, Trump is now saying he was just making a funny in suggesting injecting disinfectants could take care of the virus.
Man, all that effort to defend this nonsense…down the drain.
I suppose they are, if you report them accurately.
@patriot9793290923 Believes Dr. Fauci is a communist plant for the CCP. His tweet got four likes.
What I consider bad journalism is extrapolating anything said on twitter and pretending that it is somehow representative of opinions, thoughts or actions of people not on twitter. The NYT article I found was a perfect example of this. A whole article about how “the right” is coming after Fauci.
Their source? Tweets. Not a single named individual, just tweets.
But kudos for you on finding actual people who believe this. And if the man faces a credible threat, he deserves a security detail.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_state
http://www.godlikeproductions.com/
Old term and idea, Trump and company just used it to political advantage. The nutbags are out there and running wild.
I agree with all of this. But the things I linked are popular websites and popular right wing voices. This isn’t just crazy joe confederate flag who lives near me.
I also think the way it all happened is note-worthy. Is there any doubt this would be happening if Faucci didn’t correct the President? And didn’t shake his head when the President was sharing his usual wannabe doctor lunacy?
A site 34k likes isn’t a popular website, and a podcaster is just a dude. I have heard of the Gateway Pundit at least. These are actual people with actual opinions making them public at least.
Contrast that with the NYT article I spoke about earlier.
I’ll try to stick to pertinent facts I can pluck from this article.
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Fauci rubbed his forehead.
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On twitter and facebook, a post that claimed he was part of a secret cabal who opposed Trump was shared thousands of times. They also claims this “reached roughly 1.5 million people”, but it would be silly to think that all of them will believe it at face-value or done anything besides scrolled past. All this tells me is that somewhere between one thousand and 9,999 people shared it. If it was more they would have made it sound like more. Most probably agreed, but a certain percentage of those probably shared it for reasons besides agreeing with it.
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The author goes on to explain that someone somewhere on the internet claimed that Fauci is mobilizing to undermine the president. This person was not identified. The author then explains that this claim has spread across social media, fanned by a right-wing chorus of Trump supporters. He doesn’t say how it spreads, nor does he identify any of these supporters in any way whatsoever. Nor do we know what a “chorus” means to him. We’re left to draw our own conclusions.
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Over 70 accounts on twitter have promoted the #FauciFraud tag, with some tweeting hundreds of times per day. Three individuals are named here who the author says are “reinforcing” the sentiment, but the author does not explain how they are doing this.
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The author claims that there are thousands of other instances of anti-Fauci social media activity, which I suspect is absolutely true if you consider that billions of people have access to social media.
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The author even saw fit to quote a tweet without naming the person or even the anonymous account who tweeted it. This is really no different than me starting a newspaper to report on what the drunks I’ve bounced think about politics. It’s an unnamed tweet, yet the NYT finds it highly relevant.
It’s a long article but the author basically goes on to give us the boilerplate Trump bashing and connecting this narrative to others.
This is literally reporting on anonymous tweets to give people the idea that these ideas are somehow more popular than they are. It happens all the time. It is how a lot of narratives get born. It isn’t entirely unique to twitter. Long before social media, I learned to become wary of the phrase…
“Some people say…”
Great. Just fucking great.
Mom, she of being on national news twice campaigning for Trump and my sister-in-law, she of being on regional news campaigning for Rachel Rollins while out-woking everyone I know, are now getting into it over the stupid disinfectant injection thing on facebook. I blame Mom. She chose to engage. This really belongs in the “How has COVID effected you thread”, though.
Just seems relevant here. They were both doing a good job lately too. JUST. LET. IT. GO.
Or start a t-nation account to get that stuff out of your system, I suppose. I just came here to lift weights and now I’m enjoying arguing with strangers too.
Anyhoo…
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