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Was the whole TikTok drama a bait-and-switch to make Trump look good? (www.independent.co.uk)
submitted 2 years ago by to c/technology@lemmy.world
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[–] 13 points 2 years ago (3 children)

How so? It was politically convenient to go after TikTok when he did it, and it's politically convenient to reverse course now. That's a pretty consistent gameplan from Trump, attack something when it's popular, reverse when reversing is popular.

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  • [+] 29 points 2 years ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 child)
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  • [–] 7 points 2 years ago (3 children)

    But Trump has no values or beliefs, the only thing he's consistent about it putting his name in headlines. So reversing is absolutely consistent with his values.

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  • [+] 12 points 2 years ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)
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  • [–] 3 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    So what you're saying is he professes to have beliefs which he doesn't actually have?

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  • [–] 0 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    Nobody believes that anything he says constitutes a belief...

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  • [–] 4 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    That's irrelevant. When he says "I believe X", he is professing that he believes something. Just because we know he's lying doesn't mean he isn't saying it.

    That kinda logic scares the hell out of me, btw. People are just so numb to it that it's like their brains are short circuiting.

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  • [–] 0 points 2 years ago (2 children)

    That's kind of like random people confessing to killing Brian Thompson. Is it really a confession if everyone knows you're lying? Likewise, is it really a protestation if neither the speaker nor listener believes it?

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  • [–] 2 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    Yes it is, and saying it isn't is normalizing a terrifying thing.

    The crux of your argument is that someone isn't lying is nobody believes them. Ergo, Donald Trump isn't a liar.

    This is the EXACT fucking playbook you see in Russia and North Korea. The way you are thinking right now is SPECIFICALLY how dictators WANT you to think. It excuses lies and paves the way to the concept of there being no such thing as objective truth because everyone is lying anyways, but they're not even lies because you were never going to believe it anyways. You'll just exhaustedly shrug and choose a dissonance that's a lower energy mental state.

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  • [–] 1 point 2 years ago

    It's less about lying though.

    Hypocrisy, at least colloquially, means saying one thing and doing another, such as governors giving stay at home orders and hosting large parties during COVID mitigations.

    Saying we should ban TikTok and then saying we shouldn't ban it isn't hypocrisy. If we're being charitable, it's him changing his mind, and if we're not, it's simple populism. There's a good reason the ban was scheduled for just before inauguration, they knew it would be unpopular and didn't want it to impact the elections.

    Trump is absolutely a liar, probably worse than most politicians. He's also often a hypocrite. I just don't think "hypocrite" applies in this instance.

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  • [–] 3 points 2 years ago* (1 child)

    It used to be that politicians suffered in the polls when they flip flopped, but the only one Trump would suffer is if he went against his base.

    Like when he floated that maybe the covid vaccine was ok.

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  • [–] 4 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    Honestly, his base tends to follow him, so as long as it's not a core belief, he could flip on a number of things without incident.

    It's disgusting and I really don't understand why his base tolerates it.

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  • [–] 2 points 2 years ago

    I really don't understand why his base tolerates it.

    Because the relationship between him and his "base" isn't one between citizens and politician, it's a literally a cult following their leader.

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  • [–] 5 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    When he came with the ban idea he used the same argument of national security that is the hypocritical part. Like you say the real reason is just political convenient

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