Jophiel wrote:
Speaking of sticking to extremes and ignoring the actual issue, what had people aghast wasn't that Trump failed to suckerpunch Putin and spit on his head but that Trump publicly exonerated Putin for crimes everyone else on the planet knows he committed and instead make his intelligence services look like fools.
He was given no choice though. I already pointed out that it's the decision to ask the question that puts him in that spot. And I've explained why folks keep wanting to go there.
Quote:
You can usually say "Great meeting, boy that was swell" without adding "Oh, and Putin says he totally didn't do nothin' and I believe him so anyone saying otherwise is an idiot."
Except he didn't say that. He said the first part. Period. Then the media hounded him with questions about Russian Meddling, to which he gave as close to a non-committal answer as possible: "He says he didn't do it". He said nothing specific about what he personally believed either. That's the liberal echo chamber's interpretation of his words. He certainly didn't say "anyone saying otherwise is an idiot". I get that you're paraphrasing rather than actually quoting, but you're stretching the truth pretty extremely here.
When you're actively involved in a summit with foreign leaders is not the time to call them liars. Yet, that's exactly what was being demanded of him in that press conference. And it's him not doing that which folks are jumping on here.
Where's the middle ground? Doesn't appear to exist in this case. Which, IMO, is the real problem. No one seems to accept the concept that we can acknowledge that of course the Russians "meddled" in the same way they've done over many election cycles, while also acknowledging that they are not the only country or interests that uses propaganda to try to influence our citizen's opinions on thing (and thus potentially how they may vote, cause... you know... first amendment and all of that), and while also acknowledging that this is not nearly the massive horrible thing that everyone is making it out to be and almost certainly had minimal impact on that actual result of the election anyway, so why are we obsessing over it?
The reality is that the Left just can't bring themselves to accept that Clinton was just a horrible candidate. So horrible that even someone as poor as Trump could beat her. They were so invested in the assumption she must win, and so confused when she didn't, that they had to latch onto some reason, any reason, to explain it that wasn't just "she sucked and maybe you should have picked someone else to lead your party". So... We get conspiracy theories of Russian Meddling to fill that up. And not just regular old run of the mill meddling, but meddling on such a vast scale that it had to have tipped the scales. Um... But that's just not what happened. The Russians did not expend any more resources or effort in 2016 than the did in previous election cycles. They almost certainly had a minimal impact, at best, on the outcome. I get that that's uncomfortable for liberals to accept, but at some point, you're going to have to. Because the fantasy world you're living in just isn't healthy.