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It turns out Greenland/Denmark and Canada aren't the only friendly countries that the US has been threatening, the Vatican's ambassador to the US (according to The Free Press and Letters from Leo a Catholic focused blog) was given both explicit and coded threats of military force against the Holy See.
JD Vance, a Catholic himself, has done a pretty rare thing for the Trump admin and said they're gonna get to the bottom of it first, instead of immediately dismissing it as fake news.. This doesn't confirm it as real, but that it wasn't immediately denied and dismissed like the typical M.O. is quite interesting.
This could help explain why Pope Leo has felt so emboldened to speak up against Trump's war efforts in Iran, cause the administration officials have been warmongering against them behind the scenes. The chance that the admin actually pulls the trigger and attacks the Vatican is obviously low, but that they keep threatening many of our allies both publically and privately seems quite concerning to me. It also opens up a new thing to consider, how many other allies are they threatening behind closed doors too?
What's the source of this story? I mean, who are the links in the chain between Christopher Hale (the blogger you link to) and the Papal Ambassador? And how many links are there? The blog post only makes a vague reference to "sources."
The reason I ask is that for many years now, there is been a pattern where (1) in real life or online, someone makes a claim which puts the Trump Administration in a bad light; (2) I scrutinize the claim; and (3) it turns out to be some combination of baseless, unsupported by any evidence, based on wild twistings of peoples' words, or simply fabricated.
This claim has the same sort of feel to it and therefore I am extremely skeptical.
Hmm let's see what I wrote again and what you quoted.
You literally had your answer right there, and even if you didn't notice that, and just read Letters from Leo up to the paywall, that post also links The Free Press article twice, and mentions it four different times up to that point.
IDK how you could have missed this.
Ok, let's.
Somehow I didn't notice that those were links. But in any event, my question essentially stands:
What is the chain between the Papal Ambassador and Mattia Ferraresi? Was it a direct interview? If not, who was between them and how many steps were there?
No need to get snippy, it's a reasonable question.
What's the chain between the Papal Ambassador and Mattia Ferraresi? Was it a direct interview? If not, who was between them and how many steps were there?
That is a different question than what you asked. Similar, but not the same. The one you had actually asked was answered simply by reading what was written multiple times.
The main information we have is in the article. Perhaps Ferraresi and the rest of the TFP team have shared more details elsewhere, but I'll leave that to you to scour their social media if you want to know.
Do you, personally, believe the event in question happened? What evidence leads you to your conclusion? Is your assessment of that evidence derived from general principles, or is this a case of any stick being sufficient to beat a dog?
Which alleged event do you think has a stronger evidentiary basis: Trump's underlings threatening the Vatican, or Biden raping Tara Reade?
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That's not true at all. My original question asked for the entire chain. Apparently information as to one link in the chain was easily available, but I asked about the ENTIRE CHAIN.
Here's what I had asked:
IDK how you could have missed this.
I've had enough experience with TDS that I'm not going to bother. The chances that it will lead to anything other than vague "sources" are just too low.
What's more important is that you don't even know yourself. In other words, this is another example of someone encountering information that's "too good to check."
Well thank you for admitting that you failed to do the bare minimum of knowledge seeking and not read the original article or this. Of course you don't know if you actively chose not to.
What's the point of a discussion if "I won't read" is the starting point?
For example you so very much did not read that you don't understand that Hale claims to have independently verified from The Free Press, so they aren't in the same chain to begin with. It's not Hale > TFP > sources, it's Hale > Hale Sources and TFP > TFP sources.
If you read LettersFromLeo, his verification comes in the preface he added after the blog post so you would also know, if you had done the bare minimum, that he hasn't gone into depth revealing his sources in that blog because the verification was done after his writeup of the TFP post.
You appear to be making assertions of fact. People ask you for your evidence behind these assertions. You say that they can look for evidence if they want to:
and they decline:
They do not appear to be declining to read. You do appear to be declining to back up your assertion beyond "these people said a thing".
These people did indeed say a thing. Do you believe them? If so, why? That is a discussion. If you believe you have good reasons to believe them, or other people have poor reasons to not believe them, than taking a position and explaining your reasoning behind it produces good discussion. Even if someone else is dismissive of your reasoning, making a solid argument is persuasive to onlookers, and this forum exists precisely to facilitate that sort of discussion.
I've asked you whether you personally believe this report, and if so, why. Do you think that question is a good basis for discussion? if not, why not?
Actually, it is The Free Press and LettersFromLeo that are making such assertions.
Well yeah, if they don't want to actually bother and go to the writers to find an answer to the question they apparently have, they don't have to. But their choice is their choice! "I don't want to" isn't the same as "therefore you must be wrong". If they want to go question it, it's not hard to shoot The Free Press team an email or something.
Bari Weiss is a pretty reliable centrist who is friendly to the Trump admin in many areas. I doubt she would be letting through blatant lies on her main journalism site right? Maybe you have different ideas on how trustworthy her and her staff are, but there's probably something behind these accusations. Else Bari Weiss and her staff are risking all the good will they've built up for a relatively minor story in the grand scheme of things. And if it was completely fake, the Vatican might denounce it too and the story would fade away into nothingness while damaging their credibility in the long term. I see no reason to believe Weiss would be doing that.
By making it "your assertions" like above, you hinge the entire credibility on me, an internet stranger. And not the established journalists who broke the story.
Sure but if they can't be bothered to even read what is there (like they missed a collective five references to the original story being from TFP), what's the point? There has to be some sort of baseline before meaningful discussion occurs. I think "read the words that are on your screen and in the link" is the bare minimum.
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