White House issues marching orders to media outlets

Author: cristo71

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@IwantRooseveltagain
Here’s an article you will appreciate:


It seems that staffers at Fox were also disgusted by the conflict of interest being displayed by Fox commentators. Also, check out the writer of the article— veery interezzting!
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@cristo71
Also, check out the writer of the article— veery interezzting!
Oliver Darcy? Why is that “interezzting?

Do you understand why your claim of tu quoque was incorrect now? Are you ready to concede you made a mistake?

Do you also understand that Biden’s open letter to the media is not comparable to what happened with Trump and FOX?

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@cristo71
Yours is somewhat of a textbook example:

Tu quoque (/tjuːˈkwoʊkwi, tuːˈkwoʊkweɪ/;[1] Latin Tū quoque, for "you also") is a discussion technique that intends to discredit the opponent's argument by attacking the opponent's own personal behavior and actions as being inconsistent with his argument, therefore accusing hypocrisy.”
It’s not a logical fallacy if you didn’t present an argument to begin with, to which you didn’t. You presented an example of something that you appear to believe warranted our attention. My response pointed out that it didn’t and used your behavior as further support for that narrative. If I am wrong about that assumption of you then I take that last part back, but that hardly addresses the essence of the point I was making. Look beyond the last half sentence.

I did go on to write a few paragraphs in direct response to the point of your op. Any response to that?

Do you see CNN and Fox in a similar light? Yeah, I didn’t think so…
Fox News’s literal founding document shows that the entire point and purpose of the network was to “put the GOP on television”. So no, of course I don’t.

Show me examples of CNN hosts on stage with president Biden, text messages from their hosts proving that they believe the opposite of what they report on a daily basis, or a billion dollar defamation settlement for peddling false claims by the administration and you will have given me something to think about.
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@cristo71
When was the last time the Whitehouse sent out a memo to various press agencies issuing suggestions over their coverage of an issue involving the President? 
When was the last time the House of Representatives opened an impeachment inquiry without a full vote of that chamber? Take all the time you need.

Are you just hoping that I’ll stop asking about your tu quoque fallacy mistake?

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@cristo71
Oh, btw

a January 2020 opinion issued by the Office of Legal Counsel in the Trump administration-era U.S. Department of Justice, which formally declared that the it considers impeachment inquiries by the House invalid unless a formal vote had been held to authorize them. 

So this impeachment inquiry of Biden is considered invalid by conservatives. When will Republican hypocrisy find a limit?
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@Double_R
I did go on to write a few paragraphs in direct response to the point of your op. Any response to that?
Yes. In fact, I have ample response to just about everything you say. The problem is that when your opinions (counter opinions, really) are challenged, you resort to sophistry and, even more egregious, gaslighting. Even now, you resort to petty semantics in an effort to weasel your way out of the fallacious nature of your initial rebuttal. I have made excruciatingly clear that this is a non starter. That you remain in wonderment over why I don’t eagerly humor your shenanigans is on you.

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@IwantRooseveltagain
Oliver Darcy? Why is that “interezzting?
I don’t know if you noticed, but he also wrote the article featured in my OP. Notice that with the Trump oriented piece, his whole point was to interview and report on staffer’s disgust over an ethics line being crossed. Now, read his article which inspired this thread and notice the complete absence of any interviews at all, let alone any opinions of uneasiness. He wants to give the idea that the memo is just fine. He WANTS to carry water for the Whitehouse.

A subtle distinction, I know, but this is where your vaunted critical thinking skills should be kicking in.

Do you understand why your claim of tu quoque was incorrect now?
You have an overly narrow definition of a tu quoque here, unsurprisingly. Plus, it was not even attributed to you. Are you ever going to find your way out of this paper bag?

Do you also understand that Biden’s open letter to the media is not comparable to what happened with Trump and FOX?
I don’t recall drawing any comparisons. I do recall you and RR writhing around in whataboutisms here. Makes me think I hit a nerve or something with this topic.

I can hear the ad now: “THIS… is CNN! (Bad, but not as bad as Fox)
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@IwantRooseveltagain
When was the last time the House of Representatives opened an impeachment inquiry without a full vote of that chamber? Take all the time you need.
Other than 2019, you mean?


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@cristo71
I don’t know if you noticed, but he also wrote the article featured in my OP. Notice that with the Trump oriented piece, his whole point was to interview and report on staffer’s disgust over an ethics line being crossed. Now, read his article which inspired this thread and notice the complete absence of any interviews at all, let alone any opinions of uneasiness. He wants to give the idea that the memo is just fine. He WANTS to carry water for the Whitehouse.
That’s a distortion. The story referring to Trump was about the FOX News staffers being stunned their stars would act in such an unethical manner.

The story about Biden was about the letter sent to the press.

You have an overly narrow definition of a tu quoque here,
It’s not for me to define. The definition is what it is.

I can hear the ad now: “THIS… is CNN! (Bad, but not as bad as Fox)
You are all confused. The BIDEN request didn’t go to just CNN. CNN and the other networks haven’t even responded yet with any actions one way or the other.

If anything you should be saying - Biden…Bad but not as bad as Trump.

You seem unable to make any coherent arguments 

I don’t recall drawing any comparisons.
Yrs, you did when you said imagine if Trump sent a letter to FOX



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@cristo71
Other than 2019, you mean?
Yes, and Trump and the Republicans said the inquiry was invalid without a vote of the full House to authorize it, which was bullshit. The Republican response that the Constitution required a vote to launch an impeachment inquiry was bullshit.

Biden’s response was, hey press, why don’t you cover this bullshit attempt by the House to do an impeachment inquiry for something my son did when I was Vice President and they haven’t found any basis to launch an inquiry 

So why no vote this time? Are the inquiries valid or not? 

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@cristo71
Even now, you resort to petty semantics in an effort to weasel your way out of the fallacious nature of your initial rebuttal.
Again, you never presented an argument for me to discredit. That’s not semantics, that’s not sophistry. It’s the most basic qualifier within your own definition of the fallacy you accused me of, which was clearly absent.

I do recall you and RR writhing around in whataboutisms here. Makes me think I hit a nerve or something with this topic.
Actually yes, you did hit a bit of a nerve. In 2016 most of us believed Donald Trump had absolutely no chance of winning, because we never thought for a second that the American populace would be some combination of dumb enough, easily manipulable enough, or just apathetic enough about our politics to vote for this guy. Then in November of that year, we found out we were wrong. Only question was, which was it?

One of the few consolations was that at least now that we have accepted all of the absurdity that went along with a Trump presidency, we could stop pretending to care about things so silly. I mean, how after 4 years of this buffoon could anyone pretend to care about a tan suit? Or a president ordering grey poupon? Or saluting troops with a cup of coffee in his hands? Answer was no way would ever happen again - it would be way too easy to point out the hypocrisy there and those engaging in it would have no voice to hang their head in shame for even trying it.

But yet here we are. It doesn’t even phase the MAGA crowd or it’s sympathizers. After 4 years of watching a president blatantly using the largest cable network on television as an arm of his own political campaign, you are really going to sit here and pretend we’re all supposed to be… what, concerned? Amused? Outraged? Because the Biden White House distributed a memo asking news networks to discuss the facts of this absurd attempt to impeach him? A memo for which there is no evidence the networks felt compelled to adjust their coverage in any way and in fact quite the opposite?

This cannot be serious. This cannot be real life. it’s maddening.
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@Double_R

Only question was, which was it?
It was the dumb enough.

This cannot be serious. This cannot be real life. it’s maddening.
There is no accounting for what the MAGA Morons say and do and think. Other than they are morons. That explains why they act this way. They’re morons.
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@IwantRooseveltagain

Yes, Joe Biden has a literal Trump card to play against the House’s new impeachment inquiry.
In January 2020, the Donald Trump-led Justice Department formally declared that impeachment inquiries by the House are invalid unless the chamber takes formal votes to authorize them.
“[W]e conclude that the House must expressly authorize a committee to conduct an impeachment investigation and to use compulsory process in that investigation before the committee may compel the production of documents or testimony,” wrote Steven Engel, then the head of DOJ’s Office of Legal Counsel, backing the Trump administration’s rejection of subpoenas from the Democratic congressional investigators.
“The House had not authorized such an investigation in connection with the impeachment-related subpoenas issued before October 31, 2019, and the subpoenas therefore had no compulsory effect,” Engel, a Senate-confirmed Trump appointee, concluded in his 54 page opinion.
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@Double_R
Again, you never presented an argument for me to discredit. That’s not semantics, that’s not sophistry. It’s the most basic qualifier within your own definition of the fallacy you accused me of, which was clearly absent.
And again, you are overly focusing on a very secondary aspect of a certain (not the only existent) definition. Frankly, you are acting as though you have only just now learned about the tu quoque fallacy. Playing coy, in other words. If pressed, I could claim and show that I was implying an argument in my OP. Anyway, I will attempt to explain this a different way. Here is your first denial of your fallacy (bolding added):

Tu Quoque would have been committed if I were claiming right wing media did the same thing as your example which makes this legitimate. That’s not what I did. I pointed out how what they did during the Trump years was 10x worse and yet you seem to have no issue with it. In other words, you’re being a hypocrite. That’s not an ad hominem BTW because it’s an actual argument with a premises, logic and a conclusion that you yourself seemed to have arrived at if this is where you got that from.
In your own defense of your reasoning, you are making what amounts to an appeal to hypocrisy. If you search using the terms “appeal to hypocrisy,” you will also find references to… the tu quoque fallacy! You will also see this fine article, or I did, at least:

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@cristo71
"Tu quoque" is Latin for "you also" or "you too." It is often used in the context of logical fallacies to point out that someone is being hypocritical by accusing another person of a fault or behavior that they themselves are guilty of.
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@cristo71
You have to wonder, if Trump haters are willing to accept corruption from their side so hastily, what was even the point of getting rid of Trump?

Trump might as well still be president with the current "accepted" levels of corruption from the present administration...
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@Greyparrot
I know, right? Instead of “Trump was corrupt; Biden should serve as the proper example of what our president should be!” it is “Well, Trump was corrupt, so that gives Biden some wiggle room to be almost as corrupt!” I hope that the 30% are at least aware of how cynically partisan they are. I wonder if the 30% are aware that a voter can openly dislike both Trump AND Biden?
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@cristo71
Or much more importantly, It is absolutely not necessary to love, accept, and apologize for Biden in order to hate Trump.
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Trump might as well still be president with the current "accepted" levels of corruption from the present administration...
Bullshit. There is no corruption from Biden. You hav3 a lot of theories but no evidence. 

Trump has been indicted, not Biden.

Well, Trump was corrupt, so that gives Biden some wiggle room to be almost as corrupt!”
“The narrative that Biden is corrupt is a fiction. Just as the narrative that Ukraine interfered in the 2016 election was a fictional narrative.
Trump repeated his assertion that Ukrainians might have hacked the Democratic National Committee’s network in 2016 and framed Russia for the crime, a theory his own advisers have dismissed”

The morons keeps falling for the bullshit


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@cristo71
Trump was corrupt, so that gives Biden some wiggle room to be almost as corrupt!
Trump has been indicted for 91 felonies, Biden's son failed to mention his history of drug use on a form when he bought a gun, so yeah, Biden is almost as corrupt as Trump...that makes MAGA sense.

Donald Trump has been accused of rape, sexual assault, and sexual harassment, including non-consensual kissing or groping, by at least 25 women since the 1970s, Biden smelled a woman's hair, so Biden is almost as guilty as Trump on that too...that makes MAGA sense.

Trump led an insurrection against the country, Biden never hugs the flag, so Biden is almost as guilty as Trump of blah blah blah...that makes MAGA sense. 


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@Greyparrot
what was even the point of getting rid of Trump?
It may have had something to do with the fact that he lost the election.
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@Sidewalker
It may have had something to do with the fact that he lost the election.
Meet the new Trump, same as the old Trump?
It is absolutely not necessary to love, accept, and apologize for Biden in order to hate Trump.
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@Greyparrot
It is absolutely not necessary to love, accept, and apologize for Biden in order to hate Trump.
Nice.

To criticize Biden is to approve of everything Trump did, apparently. As I have said, there are two types of thinking…

I just thought of another type of critical theory— Critical Trump Theory (CTT). Everything Biden does can be looked at through the lens of Trump’s presidency. Whatever fault you may find in Biden’s presidency, find a suitable comparison in Trump’s presidency which could be perceived as much worse or at least as blameworthy. It could be called BTT in slang: “But Trump tho!” Or BUTT: “But, uh, Trump tho!”

The history of this period should be taught this way in schools!
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@cristo71
Ironically, the cult like mantra of "You must support Biden in order to hate Trump" is having the opposite effect as no other candidate has enough support to replace Biden, who is polling way low right now.

These cultists are literally creating a new reality where Trump easily beats Biden because Biden's supporters were too blinded to support literally anyone else on the left....

As someone who hates both of them, I find this tragic on a massive scale.
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@cristo71
Perfectly legal
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@cristo71
It's certainly legal.  It's completely transparent and above board. 

Media outlets are free to throw the memo in the trash without consequences 
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@Greyparrot
It may have had something to do with the fact that he lost the election.
Meet the new Trump, same as the old Trump?
It is absolutely not necessary to love, accept, and apologize for Biden in order to hate Trump.
But if you love Trump it's necessary to hate Biden, that's  the Trump's rule, if you are with us you must hate who we hate.

Hate is all he's got, without hate he's nothing.
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@cristo71
Tu Quoque would have been committed if I were claiming right wing media did the same thing as your example which makes this legitimate. That’s not what I did. I pointed out how what they did during the Trump years was 10x worse and yet you seem to have no issue with it. In other words, you’re being a hypocrite. That’s not an ad hominem BTW because it’s an actual argument with a premises, logic and a conclusion that you yourself seemed to have arrived at if this is where you got that from.
In your own defense of your reasoning, you are making what amounts to an appeal to hypocrisy. If you search using the terms “appeal to hypocrisy,” you will also find references to… the tu quoque fallacy! You will also see this fine article, or I did, at least:
Note the part above that I put in bold. Once again, you took the part of my post you thought made your point and ignored the rest. I already acknowledged fully that I was pointing out you are being a hypocrite. I don’t know why you think putting that part in bold proves anything.

Let’s break this down a bit simpler…

The definition you provided gives two basic qualifiers:
A) appeal to hypocrisy
B) That (A) Is committed as a means of discrediting an argument

A is present. I never pretended otherwise.

B is not present.

If one of the two basic qualifiers doesn’t match up, it doesn’t meet the definition.

You act as if this of merely a game of semantics. It’s not. Using an invalid tactic as a means of discrediting an argument is the entire point of why we identify and learn to spot logical fallacies. Pretending to discredit the logic which connects a set of premises to its conclusion when it actually doesn’t - is what makes a logical fallacy… fallacious. 

Tu quoque is Latin for “you too” which is where the name comes from. Did I engage in a “you too”? Well, kind of. I mean you can say I did even though my original post pointed out that what Trump did was ten times worse, so the idea was that your apathetic attitude towards Trump’s transgressions by comparison is bad not because he did the same thing, but rather because what he did was far worse. But whatever, for the sake of argument, sure, I engaged in a “you too”.

Does that make it a logical fallacy? No, because once again… you never presented an argument to begin with and discrediting your point whatever that was was not the point. I’ve even acknowledged that there is something wrong with what the Biden WH did so why discredit something I agreed with in the first place? The point was that the only reason you think this warrants attention is because of your political bias.

But here we are, still arguing over whether my first response was a logical fallacy when I’ve already acknowledged and owned the part of the definition you seem to take issue with, have already acknowledged and agreed with the apparent point you were originally making (although still unclear), and wrote an entire breakdown of why the example you provided is not worth our attention.

But I’m the one who tap dances to avoid arguments which conflict with my views. Ok.
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@Sidewalker
It's not the people who love Trump that you really have to worry about. It's the people who hate both, (the majority of America btw,) who find it palpably weird that MSM is taking marching orders from the Whitehouse. Those people will then make a snap decision on the impropriety of that most recent action.  A situation that could have been easily averted if not for the many Trump haters believing it is necessary to defend those actions.
There's no need to virtue signal your Trump hate by supporting the behaviors of Biden! To do so is simply going to create a massive army of Trump haters that will end up voting for him solely because there is no accountability for Biden's bad behaviors. The ultimate tragedy unfolds before our eyes.
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@Double_R
But I’m the one who tap dances to avoid arguments which conflict with my views. Ok.
Yes. Yes, you are. I only need to read your meandering, “So, am I guilty of a ‘you too’? Ok, yes, sort of. But is that a fallacy? No, because of the 10x worse aspect I pulled out of the air and you have no argument blah blah blah…” Talk about weasel wording.

Since you need an argument, even though it was initially implied and you failed to pick up on it, here:

The Whitehouse memo constitutes a conflict of interests, and Oliver Darcy’s failure to push back on it in any way shows he has no problem with a conflict of interest on behalf of the Biden administration.

Now, here’s where you go: But Trump tho!

Here, again, is your first response to me:

In the previous administration we saw prime time cable news anchors appearing on stage with the president at his rallies, one of those anchors was known to have nightly conversations with the president discussing White House strategy.

I fail to see what you’re pointing to here that we didn’t see ten fold in the previous administration which you didn’t seem to have any issue with.
And here are examples of ad hominem tu quo Que’s from the web:

“It involves rejecting someone's views because of their supposed hypocrisy. A to quoque fallacy example is: Alice advised us to exercise regularly; Alice does not exercise regularly; therefore, her recommendation must be rejected.”

Parent: “You have to clean your room, it’s too messy.”
Child: “But your room is messy too, so why should I listen to you?”

Hannah: “I think that global warming is the most important issue of our time and everyone should acknowledge that.”
Mark: “But you drive an SUV, therefore you can’t actually believe that.”