Twitter Users Blocked By Trump Sue, Claim @realDonaldTrump Is Public Forum (arstechnica.com) 430
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: A handful of Twitter users, backed by the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University, sued President Donald Trump on Tuesday, claiming their constitutional rights are being violated because the president has blocked them from his @realDonaldTrump handle. The suit claims that Trump's Twitter feed is a public forum and an official voice of the president. Excluding people from reading or replying to his tweets -- especially because they tweeted critical comments -- amounts to a First Amendment breach, according to the lawsuit.
"The @realDonaldTrump account is a kind of digital town hall in which the president and his aides use the tweet function to communicate news and information to the public, and members of the public use the reply function to respond to the president and his aides and exchange views with one another," according to the lawsuit (PDF) filed in New York federal court. "Defendants' viewpoint-based blocking of the Individual Plaintiffs from the @realDonaldTrump account infringes the Individual Plaintiffs' First Amendment rights. It imposes an unconstitutional restriction on their participation in a designated public forum," the suit says. "It imposes an unconstitutional restriction on their right to access statements that Defendants are otherwise making available to the public at large. It also imposes an unconstitutional restriction on their right to petition the government for redress of grievances."
"The @realDonaldTrump account is a kind of digital town hall in which the president and his aides use the tweet function to communicate news and information to the public, and members of the public use the reply function to respond to the president and his aides and exchange views with one another," according to the lawsuit (PDF) filed in New York federal court. "Defendants' viewpoint-based blocking of the Individual Plaintiffs from the @realDonaldTrump account infringes the Individual Plaintiffs' First Amendment rights. It imposes an unconstitutional restriction on their participation in a designated public forum," the suit says. "It imposes an unconstitutional restriction on their right to access statements that Defendants are otherwise making available to the public at large. It also imposes an unconstitutional restriction on their right to petition the government for redress of grievances."
Wrong approach (Score:5, Insightful)
@realDonaldTrump IS NOT a public forum. Is the personal Twitter account of Mr. Donald J. Trump.
@POTUS is a public forum, as is the account of the President Of The United States.
The lawsuit soud be about Mr. Donald J. Trump using his PERSONAL twitter Account to conduct matters of state and public interest...
Re:Wrong approach (Score:5, Informative)
Some in his WH cabinet have claimed it is official.
Re:Wrong approach (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Wrong approach (Score:5, Funny)
Does that apply to emails written by the Secretary of State? Asking for a friend.
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Re:Wrong approach (Score:4, Insightful)
When he uses it to publish public statements about policy then it is an official communications channel. He is the highest official in the land and is using it to communicate with the public.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Re:Wrong approach (Score:4, Insightful)
It has nothing to do with authority. It has everything to do with how the president uses that channel of communications.
Re: Wrong approach (Score:3)
Deleting data from a government system does not necessarily break any laws. Only government records, as defined by the relevant laws, have to be preserved and archived.
For example, the Presidential Records Act defines presidential records as certain kinds of things that the president (or his staff) create or receive "in the course of conducting activities which relate to or have an effect upon the carrying out of the constitutional, statutory, or other official or ceremonial duties of the President".
When T
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Leave it to an AC to not know the difference between "public" and "official." He has an official plane, too. Doesn't mean you get a ride in it.
Re:Wrong approach (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: Wrong approach (Score:2)
Re: Wrong approach (Score:5, Interesting)
The plaintiffs in this lawsuit have no right, First Amendment or otherwise, for the general public to be forcibly exposed to their responses to Trump's blather.
They can even set up a public mirror of his tweets, and respond there, if they want. Call it @realSmallHands or something, although that's probably taken.
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It seems that they are relying on the "right to petition" bit of the 1st amendment, which guarantees their right to bring complaints to the government. Someone with more knowledge can hopefully shed light on this - for example, could someone be thrown out of a two hall meeting because the Mayor didn't like what they were saying or would that violate their rights?
Re: Wrong approach (Score:5, Informative)
In the context of the First Amendment, such a meeting is called a limited public forum, and is subject to some restrictions by the government that organized it. http://www.firstamendmentcente... [firstamendmentcenter.org] goes into more depth about what is and isn't allowed.
I very much doubt that the @realDonaldTrump Twitter account will be held to be either a traditional or limited public forum for the purposes of First Amendment analysis. It meets the usual criteria for a nonpublic forum, and any "public" uses of it align closely with Perry Educ. Ass’n v. Perry Local Educators’ Ass’n, 460 U.S. 37 (1983) as described at https://canons.sog.unc.edu/lim... [unc.edu].
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You have the right to write angry responses to the Twit In Chief. You have the right to jeer when he speaks. You do not have the right to force anybody else to read your responses or listen to your jeers. You have the right to petition the government for redress of grievances, but bitching and moaning on his personal Twitter feed is not the constitutionally approved mechanism for that.
Re: Wrong approach (Score:2)
And you have the right to show how badly you lost the argument by calling names instead of citing anything to support your claims.
Re: Wrong approach (Score:2)
Eppur, si muove.
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Certainly Trump appears to believe that all of his actions fall under the protection of the office, not just his official duties. So when he is at his golf resorts on most weekends, and leaks classified information, he is not prosecuted as Donald J Trump, businessmen, but protected as POTUS.
Likewise he uses his personal Twitter account to make statements as POTUS, and bragged that it i
Re:Wrong approach (Score:5, Insightful)
@realDonaldTrump IS NOT a public forum. Is the personal Twitter account of Mr. Donald J. Trump.
@POTUS is a public forum, as is the account of the President Of The United States.
The lawsuit soud be about Mr. Donald J. Trump using his PERSONAL twitter Account to conduct matters of state and public interest...
I have a better idea. Let's stop trying to recognize a fucking Twitter account as a form of communication for the President of the United States.
His position entitles him to take over the entire spectrum of public transmission in order to broadcast a message to the masses if necessary. And I'm pretty sure the US Government budget can swing the costs of their own domain name. Perhaps we should stop pretending his ability to communicate to an entire country is somehow reliant on cheesy social media freeware.
Re:Wrong approach (Score:5, Funny)
His position entitles him to take over the entire spectrum of public transmission in order to broadcast a message to the masses if necessary.
Please dear Lord, do not let that asshole know that.
24x7 wall-to-wall ads for Trump products.
On every broadcaster. Forever.
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Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
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It's the President who is choosing to communicate via social media channels, we're not making that choice for him, so unfortunately we do have to recognize that the President of the United States is using a "fucking Twitter account" as a form of communication.
Until he stops, that's how it is. When the next fad means of communication comes out, if he's using it, it's a form of communication. Sorry.
Much like POTUS using a cell phone bought off eBay, there's a valid reason he should not be using a communications medium that has not been hardened or is under the direct control of those responsible for securing POTUS communications.
The impact of someone hacking Trumps Twitter account is considerable. It is wise to mitigate risk based on potential impact and damage, and as unstable as things are in the world (North Korea for example), it may not take but a single tweet to create a very shitty situation.
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It's the President who is choosing to communicate via social media channels, we're not making that choice for him, so unfortunately we do have to recognize that the President of the United States is using a "fucking Twitter account" as a form of communication.
Until he stops, that's how it is. When the next fad means of communication comes out, if he's using it, it's a form of communication. Sorry.
The President of the United States doesn't use a cell phone bought off eBay. Those responsible for securing and controlling the communications of POTUS make that choice for him. THAT is how it is, and not properly mitigating risk associated with using Twitter is exactly why he needs to stop.
Those serving as POTUS need to understand that some of their rights disappear while acting in that role, and for valid reasons.
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The President is not barred from expressing his opinions.
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@realDonaldTrump IS NOT a public forum. Is the personal Twitter account of Mr. Donald J. Trump.
Trump himself has tweeted
My use of social media is not Presidential - it’s MODERN DAY PRESIDENTIAL. Make America Great Again!
making it pretty clear that he intends to use it for official purposes.
cit: https://twitter.com/realDonald... [twitter.com]
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I'm sorry what? I wasn't listening.
Re: Wrong approach (Score:2, Interesting)
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This suit is not about the US govt stopping the President from having his/her say .... it's about the president (ie the govt) stopping citizens from having their say - this is a suit from people who have been silenced and are unable to respond to Trump's tweets
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The suit is as fucking stupid as they are. Because that's not happening in any way, shape or form. People can complain all they want, under their own Twitter accounts or pretty much anywhere else they feel they'll be heard. Guess what - you can't submit an article and automatically get it published in the Congressional Record, eithe
Re:Wrong approach (Score:5, Insightful)
Those citizens are free to create another account and resume monitoring of the feed, they can try to comment more moderately or just comment elsewhere. Or even resume the activities that got them blocked in the first place, in which case they will likely soon be blocked again. Actions have consequences, the freedom of speech is not without limits, insist on being obnoxious and disruptive and removing you from the venue to allow others to exercise their rights is not a violation of your rights.
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The question is whether he has actually conducted public business on his personal account and whether the President can even have a personal account. This question would eventually lead to the SC for a final decision.
All he does on his personal feed is make snide and hyperbolic personal comments on the various topics addressed on his feed.
But the people behind this lawsuit are trying anything and everything to bring the Trump administration to an end. And if these plaintiffs are so concerned about their fre
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remember, when they banned milo.. it was a private company and they could do what ever they wanted, but now when its in their favor its a public forum..
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I didn't say he runs twitter itself.
Re: Once again, slurs against the mentally ill. (Score:2)
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Once again you're here "well they do it so we can do it too!" that is NOT how being an adult works. And if you cant be an adult you have no room in this conversation.
Re: Once again, slurs against the mentally ill. (Score:2)
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Oh come now. There has never been a more obvious and extreme RINO than Donald J. Trump.
The man ran on an economic platform that was to the LEFT of Hillary (almost, but not quite, as far to the left as Sanders' platform).
Of course, he hasn't actually lived up to that platform as POTUS ("no cuts to medicaid" and "coverage for everybody" remember) - but that's what he ran on. He RAN as a straight up RINO ! He won over the rest of the republican clown car BECAUSE he was a RINO - it turns out, the public WANTED
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I browse at -1.
Complete idiocy (Score:4, Insightful)
This is the kind of utter nonsense that's likely to get us a second Trump term, making everybody on the ant-Trump side look like complete morons.
(And no, I didn't vote for the SOB.)
Re:Complete idiocy (Score:4, Insightful)
This is the kind of utter nonsense that's likely to get us a second Trump term, making everybody on the ant-Trump side look like complete morons.
(And no, I didn't vote for the SOB.)
I did vote for him, and I think your analysis is right. THIS is exactly the kind of idiocy that will get us a 2nd term. The obvious obstructionist hypocrisy is on full display. You can only trade in hype and hyperbolae for so long before folks become desensitized to your effort and you have to invent some new crisis to whip up the base again. Rinse, hype up to a lather, and repeat. I don't see how Trumps opponent can compete. By the time the next presidential election rolls around, assuming he doesn't shoot himself in the foot and get caught up in something real, he will have the persona of a guy who survived the full onslaught of the opposition, the winner he claimed to be the first time around... How does his challenger compete with that?
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Re: Complete idiocy (Score:5, Insightful)
Returning to the topic at hand, if the President feels that twitter is the appropriate way to address the nation, then the account should be treated no differently than any other instrument of the executive office.As you have noticed, the democratic party controls none of the federal government, so let us not worry so much about them as much as the ruling party and it's actions - and I know that you hold them to the same standard as you did Obama and the Democrats.
>> But please! Carry on! Continue with unhinged, delusional snarkery
You know, there's irony, and then there's irony.
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I wish people would stop saying things about armed revolts and riots.
http://www.cnn.com/2017/06/14/... [cnn.com]
Did more to help Trump than Putian ever did.
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That's a new one I haven't heard of, and I thought I knew almost all of the conspiracy theories. Any citations for this? I can't find anything online remotely mentioning this.
It is not going to work (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't think that's going to work. The White House and most if not all Senators and Congressmen have web pages for many years and have never given up the right to control what goes on them.
Free speech does not mean that the government has to publish whatever you want to say. When the president gives a speech he does not have to give up the microphone to you.
Further, if this actually got to court they could point out that the plaintiffs have multiple other avenues to having their voiced heard. There is no constitutional reason it has to be on the president's twitter feed.
Big Meh
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Yeah, it's the last part that's the crux of the matter, you have the right to speak, but I don't have to listen to you.
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Re:It is not going to work (Score:5, Interesting)
if the POTUS offers 'the citizens' in general a back-channel to reach the POTUS (ie, a reply button) - but then denies it selectively based on personal whim, THAT is the problem that we are discussing.
if he made it broadcast-only, like classic old-school one-way media, then no one has a reply button. that's how things were up until we had this 'series of tubes' appear and, well, change everything.
small-hands wants to silence his critics and make his 'channel' appear to be nothing but good feelings and support from 'all' the people. and by deleting the ones you don't agree with, you censor the public. no other way to put it, you censor the public's replies based on arbitrary political criteria.
do you really think that's a good thing? is this the kind of country and society we want?
if he's allowing any comments, he must allow them all.
stay classy, donald. (sigh)
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And, it is in no way a restriction or infringement of "free speech," anyone who wants to make a speech can do so, in their own forum.
To even try to claim it's censorship is simply ignorant.
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Trump doesn't use blocking to purge negative responses from his Twitter feed - it's basically a torrent of abuse directed at him and he doesn't block 99.9% of people replying.
He blocks people who hurt his feelings as a form of revenge. He's a poor snowflake, we know this by the way he keeps complaining about people being mean to him. That's all it is.
Re:It is not going to work (Score:5, Funny)
They could say, "It's a private account, the President is still able to post through the @POTUS account."
It'd never happen, but man, it'd be funny if it did.
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It's about Trump deciding that certain individuals don't qualify to receive his 'tweets'.
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It's about Trump deciding that certain individuals don't qualify to receive his 'tweets'.
No, you've got it exactly wrong. Certain individuals have demonstrated that they can't be constructive REPLYING in public on his personal account and have been stopped from doing so. They can READ his tweets all day long.
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I don't use twitter. But aren't they no longer able to follow, read, or reply to Trump's tweets within the twitter application?
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That's true. Free speech only means that you can say whatever you want without fear of retaliation. But this kind of political censorship is clearly retaliation for saying something the government didn't want you to say.
Re:It is not going to work (Score:5, Interesting)
I don't think that's going to work. The White House and most if not all Senators and Congressmen have web pages for many years and have never given up the right to control what goes on them.
I don't see how that's relevant (unless you mean things like Facebook).
Free speech does not mean that the government has to publish whatever you want to say. When the president gives a speech he does not have to give up the microphone to you.
No, but if he creates a bulletin board for people to post comments about his speech he can't take down all the ones he disagrees with.
Further, if this actually got to court they could point out that the plaintiffs have multiple other avenues to having their voiced heard. There is no constitutional reason it has to be on the president's twitter feed.
Big Meh
The first amendment doesn't work like that, you can't do viewpoint discrimination just because the person could publish their views somewhere else.
That being said I'm still not convinced Twitter does qualify as a public forum. I find the claims about being barred from reading the Tweets to be unconvincing (it's pretty easy to view the tweets even if blocked), but being unable to reply is another matter. Being unable to reply to @RealDonaldTrump really does affect your ability to participate in the public dialogue.
There's also a lot of Politicians who have Facebook pages, I don't see why a ruling on Trump's Twitter account wouldn't apply to their Facebook pages as well.
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"The White House and most if not all Senators and Congressmen have web pages for many years and have never given up the right to control what goes on them."
Except this is a twitter feed. The president does not own it.
"Free speech does not mean that the government has to publish whatever you want to say. When the president gives a speech he does not have to give up the microphone to you."
Except the president has given the mike to people and then jerked it away from anyone that says something he does not like
Their web pages don't host forums (Score:2)
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The president isn't publishing those tweets -- Twitter is.
Which of course confuses things greatly. Twitter is under no obligation to publish your remarks.. and yet the Twitter leaves the decision to publish to Trump, who is obligated to not suppress free speech by virtue of his being a government official.
That's before we even start discussing whether POTUS posting about policy on a private account is considered private or public information. I suspect if brought to it, SCOTUS would call it public.. but t
Funny (Score:4, Insightful)
It's a private forum when the left uses to censor people. But it's suddenly a public forum when they are the ones being censored.
Re:Funny (Score:4, Informative)
Should reputation be displayed on Twitter? (Score:2)
Not funny, but I never get any mod points so I can't give you the "insight" mod you earned. Actually, I was confused by your subject, but now I have probed and see that the Subject: was inherited from one of Putin's paid trolls. (Why are you feeding the troll?) This is a topic with LOTS of room for humor and insight, but I couldn't find any of the first and little of the second, especially in the comments so modded.
Actually I'm interested in "saving" Twitter. Probably impossible, but can you imagine the use
presidential government communication actually (Score:2)
maybe the WH should turn the video back on.
we need snaps for the #WinterIsHere snap filter
Blending business and pleasure (Score:2)
Uh, Square or Box? (Score:2)
The @realDonaldTrump account is a kind of digital town hall in which the president and his aides use the tweet function to communicate news and information to the public, and members of the public use the reply function to respond to the president and his aides and exchange views with one another
Shouldn't they be arguing that Twitter is the "digital town hall" and @realDonaldTrump is a corner where Trump stands on his soap box to make their analogy more fitting? Just because I am on Twitter (I'm not) doesn't mean I am listening to Trump.
"Twitter is a kind of digital town hall in which people use the tweet function to communicate news and information to each other and use the reply function to respond to each other and exchange views with one another"
If that is the case they are more arguing that Tw
Dumb and wrong. (Score:2)
The fundamental problem here is that the first amendment let's you say what want without being jailed. What it doesn't do is ensure that anyone has to listen to you. Secondly, you are talking about twitter, a private forum that can make up any rules that it wants or even violate it own rules without cause.
Like it or not, that's the reality.
Re:Dumb and wrong. (Score:4, Interesting)
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The First Amendment says that congress can't restrict the freedom of speech, not that you won't go to jail for it. Because Congress passes all the laws, you can extend this concept to say that any federal official cannot restrict the freedom of speech in their legal capacity as an officer.
Clearly, Trump did not use the office of the presidency to mute people on his own twitter account. On the flip side, Democracy needs more than just laws to survive. Having a thin skinned, vengeful tyrant lead a democra
What it will come down to (Score:5, Interesting)
What? (Score:2)
They don't let the public into press briefings (I'm not sure if they let the press in these days), and they wouldn't put up with them heckling if they did, and when POTUS makes a televised address he isn't forced to take phone calls from viewers afterwards.
Nope (Score:2)
The lawsuit is frivolous and makes absolutely no sense, but it calls attention to something way more serious.
Twitter, or a Twitter account is NOT public forum, it should never be consider public forum, and people advocating for something like this are crazy for doing so.
The very basis for something to be considered public forum is that it has to be government owned.
@realDonaldTrump not only is a personal account, it also belongs to a private service. It can't and won't be considered public forum because if
Is this the analogy they want? (Score:2)
Being blocked from Trump's Twitter feed, they said, was illegal and akin to a mayor ejecting critics from city hall meetings.
There's critics and there's critics. Being kicked out from a town hall meeting for merely disagreeing with the mayor would be an outrage. Being kicked out for calling the mayor an orange haired, small handed (and we all know what that means), brainless, right wing nut job that wouldn't know how to dump piss from a boot if the instructions were written on the heel, and then proceeded to list all their "grievances" from the lack of government funded healthcare to the lack of paper towels in the ladies room,
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Re:I don't get it (Score:4, Interesting)
I think they are also upset by the fact they cannot "reply" to @realDonaldTrump when banned. It's not good enough to see what he says but they want to feel important by replying to his tweets.
"members of the public use the reply function to respond to the president and his aides and exchange views with one another"
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So now a tweet is the same as a petition? That's crazy! Think of the implications.
So.. What if he refuses to answer their phone call or read their paper letter, email or FAX? Is he now REQUIRED to not block any means of communicating because it's a petition?
I think you are misreading the constitution on purpose or are flat crazy myself....
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They can tweet on their own accounts. They don't have to respond to his. That Trump won't read them is perfectly fine, both legally and otherwise.
Re:Trump isn't the problem (Score:5, Insightful)
how can we disenfranchise 63 million heavily-armed idiots? Bible-thumping assmonkeys
And this is why this country is the state it's in. Have some respect for your fellow Americans, even if you don't agree with them. You keep calling them militant rednecks, they keep calling you communist tree huggers, and nothing changes for the better. Try understanding and compromising, instead of demonizing and neutralizing.
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Re:Trump isn't the problem (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm not an American but having followed and participated in quite a few discussions about Trump and Trump supporters, here's the challenge with this: generally speaking anyone with enough intelligence can understand your point is correct, and that simply launching insults at people is not going to change anyone's mind.
But that's just it; to understand the value of civility and focusing on factual discussion instead of personal traits requires some education. The trump-base at this point consist of mostly uneducated people many of whom think for example that repealing Obamacare is a good thing when they're relying on it themselves but simply do not realize that the affordable care act and 'Obamacare' are one and the same thing. These are often extremely mis and disinformed people who are very easily manipulated with outright lies as their capability and willingness to do fact-checking is highly limited, which is why they're easy prey for all sorts of conspiracy theorists á la Alex turning the freaking frogs gay' [youtube.com] Jones.
Now then, obviously mocking these people won't make them any smarter or get them to realize their errors, so doing that is a waste of time and resources. However at the same time 'understanding and compromising' is not something they're really all that capable of at this point because trump has effectively put them in this mindset of 'winning' vs 'losing'. In their minds, the 'losers' from the 'fake news' outlets are outraged that Trump won and are trying to sabotage him from every angle, so obviously the news are going to report negative things about him but that's just because they don't want him to "win." Like the conspiracy theorists, it doesn't really mater how much data you present to them to try and show them they're wrong because they' quite naturally ignore evidence that runs contrary to their understanding. Confirmation bias combined with Dunning-Kruger effect [wikipedia.org] (Trump supporters largely overestimating their own knowledge and abilities) and curse of knowledge [wikipedia.org] where the non-Trump side assumes that the Trump supporters have all the skills available to be able to understand why the concept of say climate change is not 'a Chinese conspiracy to make American corporations less competitive' as Trump claimed if someone just hands them the facts. But that's not how it goes, and anyone who's ever debated a conspiracy theorist or been one himself will know this.
In short: as long as you have a president in charge of the country whose main rhetorical devices are lying, insults and obfuscation, I'm afraid expecting the general level of political discussion to elevate itself to a higher level is probably futile. The only long lasting answer is to educate the poor people more, which the Trump administration certainly is not going to do because it thrives on ignorance.
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You do realize that it was a gun toting Sanders supporter that opened fire on a bunch of Republicans playing baseball. http://www.cnn.com/2017/06/14/... [cnn.com]
You're holier than thou attitude is every bit as much of the problem. The Democrats put up just about the only person on the planet that could not beat Donald Trump.
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How many times has Trump and crew denied meetings with the Russians?
Those statements were all bad, false and dangerous that could get a lot of people killed. Probably have already gotten people killed.
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Then there was the time Hillary met with the Saudi's....
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Did she lie about it? Did they assist her in the election? U.S. has had it in for Assad for decades.
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I think there's a difference between saying bad things, and saying false things.
Trump is saying things which are both bad and false.
Do you think there's a difference? Should the MSM be allowed to print just any old thing they make up?
No, and they aren't. But they are allowed to call opinion news, thanks to Faux News.
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And the unhinged, vitriolic hate and calls for death and whatnot? Yeah, the left is a steady source of that. It's mostly notable because that's the crowd that's forever talking about how much better educated they are, and how low-brow and barbaric are all of the people who refused to obey and vote for Hillary.
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The smashing, violence, and beatings is overwhelmingly coming from the left. That's how it's been for many years.
I have to agree. My personal theory is that many of the violent people have convinced themselves that their political enemies are in fact bad people and "fair game" for anything. It goes like this: It's okay to punch a Nazi; conservatives are all Nazis... and then comes the punching.
Here is a web page linking multiple articles arguing that the violence used to prevent Milo Yiannopolous from spe
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Why do you people keep calling him "orange"?
Because it's hard to ignore a really bad spray tan.
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It's one thing for a public figure to block comments on his personal account. But it's another entirely to block people from viewing otherwise public posts from account when he is also making policy statements.
The whole block posting & viewing thing on Twitter is a technical design flaw and I bet if he only blocked them from posting but allowed them to keep viewing that there wouldn't be anywhere near the controversy.
The consequence is we could potentially have the President of the United States barred
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If you're @xyz and you block someone they won't show up in other people's feeds that are subscribed to @xyz. If they managed to do #maga or whatever then they will still show up in those feeds if people have also subscribed to those keywords.
If you can read without logging in, then great. I see an overlay asking me to log in that I don't know how to remove. Maybe the technical problems are solved, if so, then nevermind.
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