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How can people entertain/believe the idea that Trump's COVID-19 infection is a hoax?
- Thread starter Metaphor
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This could work out well. See the movie Dave.
lpetrich
Contributor
Democracy Now! on Twitter: ".@NaomiAKlein: Trump getting COVID is "the epidemiological equivalent of a mass shooting where the shooter opens fire on the crowd, and then turns the gun on himself. This is not a tragic accident — it is a crime scene, and should be treated as such." (links)" / Twitter
noting
Naomi Klein: I Fear Trump Will Exploit His COVID Infection to Further Destabilize the Election | Democracy Now!
More like he accidentally shoots himself.
noting
Naomi Klein: I Fear Trump Will Exploit His COVID Infection to Further Destabilize the Election | Democracy Now!
More like he accidentally shoots himself.
Don2 (Don1 Revised)
Contributor
Yeah. I haven't clicked the link, but just from the title... Imagine, part 2 of the debates and he's still in the hospital.
Debate by zoom meeting.
Imagine the user comments:
- "Hey, why does the President's voice sound different?"
- "Wow, he's coming up with tons of facts on the fly somehow. Very well-prepared this time."
- "Well, one thing is for sure. He didn't hire anyone else to take the debate for him."
zorq
Veteran Member
One more conspiracy theory and another example of how little we can trust Trump: Depending on how Trump chooses to present himself after recovering, he now has a potentially valid excuse for resigning the presidency allowing President Pence pardon him.
Covid-19 infects mammals, not creatures of the lower planes. It must be fake.
I haven't seen any doctors or nurses working on him, have you? Where is the video of him get injected with the anti-demonsperm Hydroxychlorquin Bleach Ultraviolet Enema?
Jarhyn
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The incredulity of the OP rather strains credulity in its own right.
We have a man who regularly spews outrageous lies. When he isn't spewing outrageous lies, he generally defaults to spewing mere word salad that doesn't have a truth value in the first place (it's "not even wrong").
Of course we can, AND SHOULD, put a heavy dollop of doubt into any viewing of a situation that the Drumpf camp paints a picture of. The thing is, there were two ways near the beginning that this could break towards: he either didn't have it and intended to handwave the virus away, victim blaming all those who died of it ("Trump didn't see what the big deal is"), or the situation we actually ended up with wherein Drumpf got it and this steroid driven experimental drug shitshow was to ensure.
We have a man who regularly spews outrageous lies. When he isn't spewing outrageous lies, he generally defaults to spewing mere word salad that doesn't have a truth value in the first place (it's "not even wrong").
Of course we can, AND SHOULD, put a heavy dollop of doubt into any viewing of a situation that the Drumpf camp paints a picture of. The thing is, there were two ways near the beginning that this could break towards: he either didn't have it and intended to handwave the virus away, victim blaming all those who died of it ("Trump didn't see what the big deal is"), or the situation we actually ended up with wherein Drumpf got it and this steroid driven experimental drug shitshow was to ensure.
Jimmy Higgins
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How can you not believe the boy who cried wolf?
Keith&Co.
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Bonespurs surrounds himself with people willing to lie for his cause, or at least willing to sign non-disclosure agreements so the Truth won't come out, willy nilly. This even applies to his doctors, going back at least as far as his draft deferments.
Docs who did not sign an NDA at Reed in November were not allowed to work on him this trip.
Note the narrative on his treatment varies, and gets retconned, and doc won't be tied down on some questions. So, yeah.
So, without watching a 14 minute video which somehow shows I'm arguing in bad faith, what exactly is your argument that I'm arguing in bad faith?
It's nowhere.
Incredible as this is to have to say, people do not ordinarily take video of private medical procedures to prove they have a disease.
Trump Derangement Syndrome is more widespread than COVID-19.
People who have it are capable of believing in conspiracy theories that would make Alex Jones blush.
Get a grip.
Ooh ooh ooh I know the answer to this one!!! Not going to a forum full of the people who believe in that Hoax and ask them? Attempting to start a debate with everyone but the folks you have issues with is usually done in bad faith. Just sayin.
People on this forum believe that it could be a hoax. They have expressed this belief in posts on this very thread.
But, I suppose it's easy to believe I'm starting debates in 'bad faith' if you already believe the president of the United States could fake having COVID-19. It's a sign you could believe anything.
Jarhyn
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To be fair, most of us don't think at this point that it was a hoax. We merely entertained the notion because it was about as likely as the equally disturbing reality.
I don't think there's anyone here at this point who doesn't acknowledge that the SCROTUS is sick.
It's more an issue of having no confidence in anything the administration says, given the previously discussed phenomena in which some large proportion of what he says is truthless word salad, and the entire rest of what he says is lies. This is borne out in the fact that even amid the revelations that he does have the disease, it has been a constant bullshit torrent about the severity and situation on the ground.
Jimmy Higgins
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Trump got it, now he wants to spread it... and his fucking sycophant following want him out there and the GOP is too ball-less (ovary-less) to stop him.
McConnell won't step near the White House, but won't step out and call out the President for his clearly reckless statements and behavior, even by Trump's own, bar lying on the ground standards.
McConnell won't step near the White House, but won't step out and call out the President for his clearly reckless statements and behavior, even by Trump's own, bar lying on the ground standards.
Sometimes I wonder if people remember why this forum is here.
The whole point was to fight against the irrationality of religion, anti-science, pseudoscience and conspiracy theories.
Trump embodies everything this forum originally stood against(stands against?).
I like this Lincoln Project clip to remind us of the stupid evil we are fighting against
The whole point was to fight against the irrationality of religion, anti-science, pseudoscience and conspiracy theories.
Trump embodies everything this forum originally stood against(stands against?).
I like this Lincoln Project clip to remind us of the stupid evil we are fighting against
Don2 (Don1 Revised)
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I disagree. It's a nuanced disagreement but it has relevance to this thread. So....the whole point was to stand up for rationality and that meant fight against irrationality. That's the actual core of the purpose. There's nothing in fighting for rationality that means we can't be skeptical of a science paper published that turns out to be fraudulent eventually. Moreover, if time and again, we observe a trend in why false papers are being published, we can and should decide if there are other principles at work. Doing so may be called anti-science by some but might not be: such as observing trends of false claims in science papers made by marketing departments of for-profit corporations. There's also nothing that says we cannot successfully argue a conspiracy theory is a real, valid thing. People do bad things. Sometimes, people get together to do them. And sometimes they try to keep it a secret.
Let's face the truth here. A blanket statement that all conspiracy theories are untrue is illogical since we know of conspiracies that are real. I know and you know and many in the forum know that there should be a lot of evidentiary weight behind a given conspiracy because they should be hard, very hard to prove.
However, if you look closely at some of the debates between the old Internet Infidels and creationists, you'll notice something there sometimes. There's often an accusation lodged at the creationist for KNOWINGLY propagating false information. That is, the arguments are debunked and some of the creationist editors and debaters are smart enough to know it. They decide to go on continuing to support knowingly false information anyway. To what purpose? Power and control. That's largely what religion is about anyway, isn't it? I will make a leap to say that at least some of the time, these individuals work together knowingly propagating false information. For greed, power, lust, control. How could it not be the case when you have outright fraud that is contradicted by reality? For example, when they don't actually heal the people in the wheelchairs but the wheelchair person gets up as if they are healed, there has to be more than one person in the know. There's a whole scam of getting them there, the right person, then the "healer" has to know and whoever else is involved in logistics coming into contact with the real state of the person who can walk.
This is the conservative leadership we are dealing with. Many knowing liars and scam artists. The most powerful and elite will tend to be such persons because to get to that status you need to make a shit ton of money. It's been like this a long, long time. Millenia.
At the same time, we are dealing with an innocent subset in the conservative movement that believes lies, any lies, and a Dear Leader who makes up lies and gets his administration to engage in those lies with him. He's the leader of the Party. The Lincoln Project is a great example of of rebels within the Republican Party who are running away from supporting the lies and running away from engaging in conspiracies to fool people. Many govt employees have quit, been targeted, been fired, or outed for blowing the whistle or telling the truth and many of those persons are career employees or Republicans.
One of the arguments against conspiracy theories is that if they were really real, someone in the vast network of persons involved would come forward. You just can't hold that many people back. BUT that's exactly what we've been seeing here over and over. Colonel Vinderman. Lev Parnas. Ambassador Bolton. Michael Cohen. Various Generals of the military. Various experts called to testify in the impeachment. That seems like ancient history now...
But lies and colluding to spread lies, disinformation, and even conspiracy theories about the other side hasn't stopped. So fast forward to now. You've got politicians saying one thing and you've got doctors saying another. You've got Trump forcing doctors to sign NDAs which doesn't even make sense since there is HIPAA....except that it would make sense if the plan is to lie about health.
So there actually are valid conspiracy theories here. But they're not the one Metaphor is screaming about. Most likely...
One of the relevant conspriacy theories here was Hydroxychloroquine. What was that about? The Reich wing noise machine saw all the clinical trial activity of HCQ and decided it would eventually be a winner. So, they turned it into a thing--where liberals were trying to stop people from getting it--so that when it finally got approved for a covid indication they could take credit and claim it should have been used in all the time beforehand causing thousands to die. Because of the evil democrats. HCQ could not be approved for hospital use against covid because the dose was so high that side effects cropped up beyond rates regularly seen for the drug. This did not stop El Presidente from convening a panel of crazy doctors to make a public statement in support of the Reich wing noise machine. But he knows and the people around him know it was all phony which is why he's not taking it any more. The popularity of HCQ is replaced with remdesivir, the next promising medicine for covid. El Presidente is now preemptively declaring remdesivir a winner in order to ride on its coat tails and anyone who stands in his way will be an enemy to a cure...much like the HCQ propaganda before.
What else? Well, these guys are screaming about SOCIALISM from one side of their mouths, about how the Democrats want to implement socialism. I will remind you of how this works. Party members receive talking points. Often enough. That means their lies are coordinated amongst several people. There's a name for that. But anyway, what is the President offering now to solve the problem? Free healthcare--free Regeneron antibodies--to anyone who needs it. SOCIALIZED MEDICINE.
The plain truth is that the President and his administration engage in conspiracies to lie. And the most recent covid situation and the President getting it are surrounded by more lies. Right now he's running around without a mask, saying he's cured....like the guy in the wheelchair being cured by a multi-millionaire pastor. Getting it "was a Blessing from God." Because he's "The Chosen One." So, it is hard to blame people for disbelieving a scam artist and his scam administration that he actually got sick.
But that's my answer to the op question: "How can people entertain/believe the idea that Trump's COVID-19 infection is a hoax?"
People can entertain the idea that it's a hoax because they look at past and current behaviors to extrapolate predictions about the unknown. It is perfectly reasonable to entertain the idea on such basis.
But the next part of the question is about actually being convinced and believing such idea that has been entertained.
I think if we look at the pattern of all the inconsistencies about his getting the illness, we see inconsistencies about the severity...such as it may have been mild to it may have been severe. This is fairly random. So for example, he seems to be in "an altered state" from taking steroids and having the illness is a strong indication he had the illness even if there is other data such as the short span of time up to his saying he is cured that goes the other way. There are quite a few people in his administration who are going off the record as sources to tell the truth about his condition....and again these are random tidbits here and there about the lies....such as that he was on oxygen. None of these anonymous sources is saying he was never ill.
So to sum up...conspiring to lie to people for power and control is a characteristic of conservative leaders and has come to a peak in this current Presidential team but believing in the particular conspiracy theory that Trump's covid infection is a hoax is not reasonable based on currently available evidence.
Man, talk about obtuse.