Editorials & Other Articles

riversedge

(70,222 posts) Wed Jun 15, 2016, 06:10 AM Jun 2016

‘A lot of people are saying . . . ’: How Trump spreads conspiracies and innuendoes

Politics
‘A lot of people are saying . . . ’: How Trump spreads conspiracies and innuendoes
How Donald Trump spreads unproven theories

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/a-lot-of-people-are-saying-how-trump-spreads-c

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Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump often repeats controversial theories and conspiracies, but distances himself from blame with a few key phrases. (Jenny Starrs/The Washington Post)

By Jenna Johnson June 13

Following the country’s most deadly mass shooting, Donald Trump was asked to explain what he meant when he said President Obama either does not understand radicalized Muslim terrorists or “he gets it better than anybody understands.”

“Well,” Trump said on the “Today Show” Monday morning, “there are a lot of people that think maybe he doesn’t want to get it. A lot of people think maybe he doesn’t want to know about it. I happen to think that he just doesn’t know what he’s doing, but there are many people that think maybe he doesn’t want to get it. He doesn’t want to see what’s really happening. And that could be.”

In other words, Trump was not directly saying that he believes the president sympathizes with the terrorist who killed at least 49 people in an Orlando nightclub. He was implying that a lot of people are saying that.

Trump frequently couches his most controversial comments this way, which allows him to share a controversial idea, piece of tabloid gossip or conspiracy theory without technically embracing it. If the comment turns out to be popular, Trump will often drop the distancing qualifier — “people think” or “some say.” If the opposite happens, Trump can claim that he never said the thing he is accused of saying, equating it to retweeting someone else’s thoughts on Twitter. .........................................