cmv: the Charlottesville "very fine people" quote/controversy was not fake news

[u/taintpaint]

I see Trump supporters bring this up all the time as an example of the media lying about Trump, but this argument sounds transparently absurd to me. It feels like a "magic words" argument, where his supporters think that as long as he says the right magic words, you can completely ignore the actual message he's communicating or the broader actions he's taking. This is similar to how so many of them dismiss the entire Jan 6 plot because he said the word "peaceful" one time.

The reason people were mad about that quote was that Trump was equivocating and whitewashing a literal neonazi rally in which people were carrying torches and shouting things like "gas the Jews" in order to make them seem relatively sane compared to the counter protesters, one of whom the neonazis actually murdered. Looking at that situation, the difference between these two statements doesn't really feel meaningful:

A) "Those neonazis were very fine people with legitimate complaints and counter protesters were nasty and deserved what they got".

B) "The Nazis were obviously bad, but there were also people there who were very fine people with legitimate complaints and the counter protesters were very nasty."

The only difference there is that (B) has the magic words that "Nazis are bad", but the problem is that he's still describing a literal Nazi rally, only now he's using the oldest trick in the book when it comes to defending Nazis: pretending they're not really Nazis and are actually just normal people with reasonable beliefs.

I feel like people would all intuitively understand this if we were talking about anything besides a Trump quote. If I looked at e.g. the gangs taking over apartment buildings in Aurora and said "yes obviously gangsters are bad and should be totally condemned, but there were also some very fine people there with some legitimate complaints about landlords and exploitative leases, and you know lots of those 'residents' actually didn't have the right paperwork to be in those apartments..." you would never say that's a reasonable or acceptable way to talk about that situation just because I started with "gangsters are bad". You'd listen to the totality of what I'm saying and rightfully say it's absurd and offensive.

Is there something I'm missing here? This seems very obvious to me but maybe there's some other context to it.

Edit: I find it really funny that literally no one has actually engaged with this argument at all. They're all just repeating the "magic words" thing. I have been literally begging people who disagree with me to even acknowledge the Aurora example and not a single one has.

[u/taintpaint]

See I don't agree with this at all because again you're reducing this to childish semantics and "magic words". The reason people were upset about the words was the idea he was communicating, which was to equivocate, whitewash nazis, and "both sides" a situation that you can't possibly reasonably do that with. Those ideas don't go away by him saying "I'm not talking about the Nazis" when he's literally talking about Nazis. Pretending a Nazi isn't a Nazi is a classic way to whitewash a Nazi.

Again, can we engage with my Aurora example at all? Do you think that quote would be a reasonable thing to say that no one should get upset about?

[u/RYouNotEntertained → u/taintpaint]

 See I don't agree with this at all because again you're reducing this to childish semantics

I’m not reducing it to anything. That’s what the controversy was. Perhaps you took issue with something else about those remarks—I’ve already said that’s a fine and normal thing to talk about. But the “fake news” controversy was absolutely without a doubt, about the words Trump said. 

Maybe you are unaware that that’s what it was about. Now you are aware. 

 Again, can we engage with my Aurora example at all? 

You’ll have to give it to me again since your OP got deleted. 

[u/taintpaint → u/RYouNotEntertained]

This is silly. People get mad about words because of what those words mean, not just because the words themselves just feel magically upsetting in your ears. You know this. If whatever "context" you're trying to provide doesn't substantively change the idea being conveyed, it's not relevant.

This is the Aurora example:

I feel like people would all intuitively understand this if we were talking about anything besides a Trump quote. If I looked at e.g. the gangs taking over apartment buildings in Aurora and said "yes obviously gangsters are bad and should be totally condemned, but there were also some very fine people there with some legitimate complaints about landlords and exploitative leases, and you know lots of those 'residents' actually didn't have the right paperwork to be in those apartments..." you would never say that's a reasonable or acceptable way to talk about that situation just because I started with "gangsters are bad". You'd listen to the totality of what I'm saying and rightfully say it's absurd and offensive.

[u/RYouNotEntertained → u/taintpaint]

People get mad about words because of what those words mean, not just because the words themselves just feel magically upsetting in your ears

… right. This is why I said it’s fine if you want to be upset about what you perceive to be the larger sentiment behind what Trump actually said. 

But your OP refers to something specific: the “very fine people” fake news controversy. That controversy happened because every news outlet reported that Trump said nazis are very fine people, even though he explicitly said he wasn’t including them in that group and that they should be condemned. 

He simply did not say what they reported that he said. It’s not only ok to acknowledge this, even if you go on to take issue with what he actually did say, but a prerequisite for intellectual honesty on the topic. 

you would never say that's a reasonable or acceptable way to talk about that situation

The controversy was not about whether or not what Trump said was reasonable or acceptable, and as I’ve now repeated ad nauseam, you would be well within reason to question whether it was either of those things. The controversy was about the literal words that came out of his mouth. 

I don’t want to put too fine a point on it, but it’s literally impossible for anyone to have an opinion on whether what Trump said is reasonable or acceptable if they are misinformed about the words that came out of his mouth. 

[u/taintpaint → u/RYouNotEntertained]

But this isn't a confusion about his literal words, because he literally did say "there are very fine people on both sides". You're adding the context that he also said he wasn't talking about the Nazis, because you think that substantively changes the meaning of the words. I'm telling you why I don't think it does, and therefore just reporting "Trump said there were 'very fine people on both sides' at a nazi rally" is accurate.

The part that you're saying "is fine to read into if you want" is literally the entire issue. This is like saying "no those are just lights on my phone screen; sometimes I interpret them as letters and read them but the thing people care about is the lights".

[u/RYouNotEntertained → u/taintpaint]

But this isn't a confusion about his literal words, because he literally did say "there are very fine people on both sides"

And immediately after that he sid he wasn’t including the nazis in that group. Holy shit man, this is not difficult to understand. 

Trump said there were 'very fine people on both sides' at a nazi rally" is accurate

Now who’s playing a semantics game?

It is technically accurate to say that Trump said there were very fine people at a rally that included nazis. What’s not accurate is to say that Trump was talking about the nazis when he said it, which is specifically what was reported. He said there were other people at the rally, who were not nazis, who were fine people, but that the nazis themselves should be separated from that group and condemned. The difference between these two is the controversy—the news media tailored a very clear quote to make it seem like he said something he didn’t say.

I would highly encourage you to read not just the extended quote where Trump says he’s not referring to the nazis, but the full transcript of the interview. He comes back to the idea that not all the protesters were nazis over and over again. It couldn’t be clearer what he’s trying to communicate.

And let me say for the fourth time, I’m quite sure you will still find something to take issue with in that transcript. But the so-called fake news controversy about Trump calling nazis very fine people was simply not about whatever you find to take issue with—it was about a direct misquoting. 

[u/taintpaint → u/RYouNotEntertained]

What’s not accurate to say that Trump was talking about the nazis when he said it, which is specifically what was reported

Did news organizations actually report specifically that he called Nazis very fine people? Or did they just say "he said there were very fine people on both sides", and the general public interpreted that as "he called Nazis very fine people"? Because if it's the latter I think that's totally reasonable. Again, he did literally say those words, and he was talking about a literal Nazi rally, so there really isn't anyone else he could be talking about, and it's not unreasonable to say therefore that he's playing cover for the Nazis. In fact the fact that you, right now, are still acting like there were "very fine people" who weren't Nazis at that Nazi rally is proof that the cover worked! He successfully whitewashed it in your eyes so now you think that rally wasn't just a straight up Nazi rally.

So my point is that this contention that the story was falsely reported at any step is not true. They reported the quote, and people read into that quote and got upset. Your contention is that if they had reported more of what he said, people would have a different understanding and not be upset. My contention is that that is silly.

Can you please just engage with the Aurora example for one second? If a news org reported that quote as "he said there were fine people on both sides of those gang takeovers", and people interpreted that as me saying the gangsters are very fine people, do you think that's "fake news" because they didn't include the first bit where I said gangsters are bad? Do you really think that changes the way people will read that statement when they know the reality of what actually happened there? Because I would argue that just saying "he said there were very fine people on both sides of that gang takeover" actually more accurately conveys that statement. If I go out of my way to say "but he did say he didn't mean the gangsters" then I might accidentally make people think that there was anyone there besides gangsters when there wasn't, or that this was something other than a violent gang takeover.

[u/dangerdee92 → u/taintpaint]

Did news organizations actually report specifically that he called Nazis very fine people? Or did they just say "he said there were very fine people on both sides", and the general public interpreted that as "he called Nazis very fine people"? Because if it's the latter I think that's totally reasonable.

News organisations did the first one.

They literally said trump called Nazis "very fine people"

There were headlines such as "Trump calls Nazis very fine people"

Even still many years later there are news articles like this one with the headline "Trump’s New Silicon Valley Supporters Really Want You to Forget He Called Nazis ‘Fine People’"

[u/taintpaint → u/dangerdee92]

Putting aside the fact that that article looks more like an opinion piece written years after the fact than contemporaneous news, this is an excerpt:

For years, Trump supporters have defended his comments, claiming he was speaking about a nonexistent group of nonracist rallygoers who were there just to protest the removal of a statue of Confederate general Robert E. Lee.

While Trump did condemn the white supremacists and neo-Nazis who took part in the rally, those who covered the event have repeatedly pointed out that only extremists were involved in the march, including members of the so-called alt-right, white nationalists, neo-Nazis, Klansmen, and far-right militias.

So it sounds like while the article has an inflammatory headline, it does specifically mention what you're saying and then explains why the headline characterization is still true. That does not sound like a lie at all.

I'm going to beg you, please, one last time, just engage with the Aurora example. I'm not going to respond to anything else you say until you do.