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I remember getting into an hours-long argument with Yassine where he insisted that Trump told people to drink bleach, refusing to be swayed despite all evidence to the contrary, going deep into the linguistic sub-branches of every sentence across pages of Trump’s remarks to find anything that could remotely prove his point.
The vast majority of Trump criticism has been like this. I was called a sycophant for not believing Trump colluded with Russia, then it will be fake rape accusations, then some claimed paperwork error, then some policy thing. And maybe Trump has been attacked unfairly, but he also makes mistakes, can’t we agree, why can’t you agree to that? Maybe I could have agreed with Trump’s approach, but, look! — a liberal judge just struck it down, it must mean that Trump didn’t prepare hard enough, because he’s lazy and not very good at politics.
I don’t want your pity. I roll my eyes when people who are never satisfied by anything proclaim that I need to work harder to win their good praise.
I don't know anything about you as a person, so if you are not one of those people who feels reflexively obligated to defend everything Trump says or does, then I do not pity you or have contempt for you. I think of personal friends who voted for Trump on the view that he was the less bad of the options available to them, and who do not make excuses for his bad qualities.
Where I come in - sympathising with Meskhout - is when dealing with people who seem to be committed to the, for lack of a better term, Trump cult. I suppose a simple test is to ask a question like, "Can you tell me some things Trump has done that you disagree with, or that you think went badly?" Every politically sane person has some disagreements or disappointments even with their own favoured side.
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Drinking bleach leftist rant actually costs lives. Trump did butcher the science but what he was actually referring to were things like disinfecting nasal sprays which were very effective on Covid since Covid starts in your nasal system. Blasting yourself with non-toxic disinfectants gave your body significantly more time to build up antibodies to Covid where it causes real problems.
By that logic, the fact that Trump chose the word "bleach" instead of "disinfecting nasal spray" is what cost lives.
https://www.rev.com/transcript-editor/shared/mnOqITkvEK1KScAILD2noDKpF9qngCthSkSGP3U4STiWF9U387_taOigvnKGkgH2_o-WZB8OEApoouMghl_8CGmHdR8?loadFrom=PastedDeeplink&ts=2045.52
He did not utter the word bleach at any point in that conference, the science guy from Homeland Security mentionned they tested multiple disinfectants, including bleach, then Trump made some noises about how cool science and UV light and disinfectants are and expressing the hope that they find a way to use it internally to kill viruses. Then later in the Q&A a journalist (Jim; Acosta maybe?) implies Trump suggested to inject bleach and the media ran with this complete and utter fabrication.
Wow. This has shades of Trump's speech where he explicitly said he "condemned totally" the neo-Nazis ... only to have journalists spread the meme that he called them "very fine people". Normally he's very sloppy in his speech, but even in cases where he's uncharacteristically precise, he'll get widely misquoted anyway. So where's the incentive for him to clean up his language?
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Yeah, this is a really effective argument technique against people who assume good faith. If you assume good faith, you will think that evidence will change the mind of their interlocutor. Therefore, if it does not, you must be mistaken. So merely by stubbornly holding positions, they can change their opponent's mind.
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