The Trump Presidency | Biden Inaugurated

Status
Not open for further replies.
Sky1981 said:
2 wrongs dont make right.

I'm anti Trump btw. But What woodward did in my view is unethical, profiteering for his book sales, vested with interest (at least timing wise). Crime? Nope. Just unethical.

This is not whatabouterry and me saying trump is innocent.
Click to expand...

And if he had released it immediately, it wouldn’t have changed anything and we would have all this other previously unknown information about Trump shithousery.
 
Kentonio said:
And if he had released it immediately, it wouldn’t have changed anything and we would have all this other previously unknown information about Trump shithousery.
Click to expand...

Except we will never found out.

The difference woodward has is that he had it on tape.

If he debunked him back then it wont make the 42 percent hated trump, but even if one people believed him enough to wear mask it would have changed things.

Plus. We will never know. It does changes alot of things now isnt it?
 
Sky1981 said:
Except we will never found out.

The difference woodward has is that he had it on tape.

If he debunked him back then it wont make the 42 percent hated trump, but even if one people believed him enough to wear mask it would have changed things.

Plus. We will never know. It does changes alot of things now isnt it?
Click to expand...

Potentially it changes a lot. He's releasing a book with not just this one terrible thing, but lots of examples of Trump being a raging asshole and he's releasing it just before the election. It won't change the 42 like you said, but it could well sway more independents.
 
SirAF said:
Absolute bullshit. The argument about a personal profit is also idiotic at best, Woodward is 77 years old and one of the most respected journalists in the world - you can bet your ass he is more concerned about «getting it right».
Click to expand...
Doesn't change the fact that he chose not to reveal the information and now stands to profit from it.
 
Sky1981 said:
Except we will never found out.

The difference woodward has is that he had it on tape.

If he debunked him back then it wont make the 42 percent hated trump, but even if one people believed him enough to wear mask it would have changed things.

Plus. We will never know. It does changes alot of things now isnt it?
Click to expand...
Trump was on tape admitting to sexually assaulting women and this country still elected him. Woodward releasing this would have made no difference at all when you consider how this administration chose to deal with this pandemic.
 
I have to agree with @entropy, @Sky1981, and @decorativeed here. COVID-19 is a killer, keeping behind important information like this for the purpose of creating a better book is unethical. It may not have changed anything to come out in public, but given that Woodward has Trump on tape saying this, it may also have had some impact on the national narrative, which in turn could have forced Trump to take action sooner. (To save his public image, which is of course Trump's #1 concern.)

Obviously, that doesn't in the slightest absolve Trump of anything. He's the one that actually said the right thing to a journalist but lied to the entire country and neglected his duties, causing enormous unnecessary suffering. But while that is true, it can also be true that Woodward could have a positive influence here, and chose not to, for the purpose of his book.

Also, I understand where the race perspective comes from. I don't agree with how it is worded in the tweet, but I do think a person of colour and/or lower class might have been more aware of how crises (any and all crises) hurt people, and hence might have felt more compelled to make the interview public right away. A privileged White person (including also myself, for that matter) is generally less likely to have that perspective, or to have it come to mind in this kind of situation.
 
Halftrack said:
What info? That known liar and idiot Donald Trump is a liar and an idiot? Literally every expert and health organisation out there were saying "THIS IS DANGEROUS!" The kind of people who listen to Trump over those experts are the kind of people who wouldn't have given a single shit about Trump being caught in a lie, just like they didn't give a shit every other time he was caught in one.
Click to expand...

Have to agree. I understand where people criticizing Woodward are coming from but it wouldn't have changed anything back then. It's not like it was new information that Covid was dangerous. Now the revelations may have a real impact.
 
Zehner said:
Have to agree. I understand where people criticizing Woodward are coming from but it wouldn't have changed anything back then. It's not like it was new information that Covid was dangerous. Now the revelations may have a real impact.
Click to expand...

Bingo. To those who think the timing is political, damn straight it is! Trump must be stopped at any price.
 
“Real change” can only happen after 200k deaths, disproportionately affecting black, brown communities and some 77 yr old white guy drops his book, which let's be honest, everyone will probably forget after the weekend.
 
Sky1981 said:
Except we will never found out.

The difference woodward has is that he had it on tape.

If he debunked him back then it wont make the 42 percent hated trump, but even if one people believed him enough to wear mask it would have changed things.

Plus. We will never know. It does changes alot of things now isnt it?
Click to expand...
this - hes not as guilty as trump but he also has blood on his hands imo
 
entropy said:
“Real change” can only happen after 200k deaths, disproportionately affecting black, brown communities and some 77 yr old white guy drops his book, which let's be honest, everyone will probably forget after the weekend.
Click to expand...
Why do you keep mentioning what race he is?
 
Dr. StrangeHate said:
He definitely needs to be asked why he hid the tapes up to now.
Click to expand...

He's already answered it.

"If I had done the story at that time about what he knew in February, that's not telling us anything we didn't know," Woodward said. At that point, he said, the issue was no longer one of public health but of politics. His priority became getting the story out before the election in November.

"That was the demarcation line for me," he said. "Had I decided that my book was coming out on Christmas, the end of this year, that would have been unthinkable."
Click to expand...

https://www.voanews.com/usa/journalist-woodward-defends-decision-withhold-trumps-virus-comments
 
entropy said:
“Real change” can only happen after 200k deaths, disproportionately affecting black, brown communities and some 77 yr old white guy drops his book, which let's be honest, everyone will probably forget after the weekend.
Click to expand...

If he had published those quotes right away, what would've changed? Do you think he would have lead the country more carefully because of the public pressure? The only pressure he cares about is the one from his followers and they wouldn't have given a damn. He's been caught so often and his supporters have proven time and again that they don't care about earlier Trump statements that fully contradict the current ones - especially not if they were published by a journalist they deem part of the fake news enemy. By the time Corona really hit the floor, those revelations would've already been forgotten and he would've said the same things he's claiming now: That he's done a great job, that the numbers are great and the liberal media present them out of context etc. Now those quotes appear in a completely different light. Yes, they might still be forgotten until the elections but chances are much better they won't.
 
SirAF said:
He's already answered it.



https://www.voanews.com/usa/journalist-woodward-defends-decision-withhold-trumps-virus-comments
Click to expand...
so he chose to trade off saving peoples lives in order to sell more books - fair enough but as I say blood on his hands imo (though a lot less than trump) but fundamentally he chose to sit on information that he mist have known could have potentially made a difference and saved lives yet he chose a date that seems commercially driven by potential book sales to release it - he could easily have released those tapes early and said the rest of the book will be ready in november but this is a matter of public health and its too important to sit on - he didnt and as I say blood on his hands imo
 
sun_tzu said:
so he chose to trade off saving peoples lives in order to sell more books - fair enough but as I say blood on his hands imo (though a lot less than trump) but fundamentally he chose to sit on information that he mist have known could have potentially made a difference and saved lives yet he chose a date that seems commercially driven by potential book sales to release it - he could easily have released those tapes early and said the rest of the book will be ready in november but this is a matter of public health and its too important to sit on - he didnt and as I say blood on his hands imo
Click to expand...

He wasn’t going to save any lives, have you even been watching the last 3.5 years of this rogue administration?
 
sun_tzu said:
so he chose to trade off saving peoples lives in order to sell more books - fair enough but as I say blood on his hands imo (though a lot less than trump) but fundamentally he chose to sit on information that he mist have known could have potentially made a difference and saved lives yet he chose a date that seems commercially driven by potential book sales to release it - he could easily have released those tapes early and said the rest of the book will be ready in november but this is a matter of public health and its too important to sit on - he didnt and as I say blood on his hands imo
Click to expand...

He literally said it wasn't. Sorry, I disagree - let's just leave it there.
 
Rallygoer is half right, someone was indeed created/elected to destroy the united states of america.
 
SirAF said:
He literally said it wasn't. Sorry, I disagree - let's just leave it there.
Click to expand...

Agreed. I also think a lot of the rage by the medical experts on CNN is phony. I work in the biomedical field and did my PhD work in infectious disease, so I would like to think I am pretty knowledgeable about viruses. Any scientist or doctor who tells you that in late Feb they would have been shocked by the idea that SARS-CoV-2 was transmitted through aerosols is either being disingenuous or incompetent. By the beginning of March my company was already working from home and anyone who had to be on campus had a mask requirement. It was simple common sense. To set up the idea that there is some sort of moral equivalence between a reporter and the POTUS when it comes to acting in the public interest is dangerous and insane.
 
entropy said:
You're wrong. Sitting on such information to help your book sales is absolutely disgusting.
Click to expand...

Do you think Trump's actions in all of this disgusting as well, or do you think he did the right thing by witholding what he knew?
 
WI_Red said:
Agreed. I also think a lot of the rage by the medical experts on CNN is phony. I work in the biomedical field and did my PhD work in infectious disease, so I would like to think I am pretty knowledgeable about viruses. Any scientist or doctor who tells you that in late Feb they would have been shocked by the idea that SARS-CoV-2 was transmitted through aerosols is either being disingenuous or incompetent. By the beginning of March my company was already working from home and anyone who had to be on campus had a mask requirement. It was simple common sense. To set up the idea that there is some sort of moral equivalence between a reporter and the POTUS when it comes to acting in the public interest is dangerous and insane.
Click to expand...
On the bolded bit: i don't think anybody is saying that (or I overlooked it). I think people are saying that Woodward, through these conversations with Trump, knew of the risk COVID-19 was bringing to the US, and then noticed Trump deny any such risk on tv and through his (lack of) policies. Woodward would thus have known that Trump's action would make the US very vulnerable and could lead to significant suffering, and Woodward would have known that this could be avoided by proper action in line with what he knew that Trump did know and understand about the virus.

That's the situation Woodward was facing in spring. Back then, he had two choices available to him: (1) release his information immediately, in the hope that it would kick up a storm that would hurt Trump's public image and force him into action against COVID-19; or (2) reserve the information for his book and release it in time before the elections, in the hope it would kick up a storm that would hurt Trump's election chances. You could say that the first option was unlikely to have any effect, but that's no different from the second. In fact, back then, it was still possible that Trump would pivot on COVID-19 due to its severity, in which case the second scenario would have become obsolete. From that point of view, I do think Woodward should rather have chosen for option #1.

Again, as for the racial perspective: I think the idea here is that a privileged White person would have less eye for the impact of a nationwide crisis on people that are not well-off - which includes a disproportionale percentage of people of colour. So Woodward may not have full recognized the impact of the crisis because of his background, hence skewing his opinion towards option #2.

Zlaatan said:
Do you think Trump's actions in all of this disgusting as well, or do you think he did the right thing by witholding what he knew?
Click to expand...
Various posters have been suggesting this now, that blaming Woodward means Trump did nothing wrong. I have no idea where that's coming from; no-one suggested any such thing. If Woodward made the wrong decision, that still means Trump made decisions that were much more wrong and had much more impact. These things are not mutually exclusive.
 
Last edited:
Cheimoon said:
On the bolded bit: i don't think anybody is saying that (or I overlooked it). I think people are saying that Woodward, through these conversations with Trump, knew of the risk COVID-19 was bringing to the US, and then noticed Trump deny any such risk on tv and through his (lack of) policies. Woodward would thus have known that Trump's action would make the US very vulnerable and could lead to significant suffering, and Woodward would have known that this could be avoided by proper action in line with what he knew that Trump did know and understand about the virus.

That's the situation Woodward was facing in spring. Back then, he had two choices available to him: (1) release his information immediately, in the hope that it would kick up a storm that would hurt Trump's public image and force him into action against COVID-19; or (2) reserve the information for his book and release it in time before the elections, in the hope it would kick up a storm that would hurt Trump's election chances. You could say that the first option was unlikely to have any effect, but that's no different from the second. In fact, back then, it was still possible that Trump would pivot on COVID-19 due to its severity, in which case the second scenario would have become obsolete. From that point of view, I do think Woodward should rather have chosen for for option #1.

Again, as for the racial perspective: I think the idea here is that a privileged White person would have less eye for the impact of a nationwide crisis on people that are not well-off - which includes a disproportionale percentage of people of colour. So Woodward may not have full recognized the impact of the crisis because of his background, hence skewing his opinion towards option #2.


Various posters have been suggesting this now, that blaming Woodward means Trump did nothing wrong. I have no idea where that's coming from; no-one suggested any such thing. If Woodward made the wrong decision, that still means Trump made decisions that were much more wrong and had much more impact. These things are not mutually exclusive.
Click to expand...

I should have been more clear that my post was more directed at the way social and regular media is framing this.
 
entropy said:
“Real change” can only happen after 200k deaths, disproportionately affecting black, brown communities and some 77 yr old white guy drops his book, which let's be honest, everyone will probably forget after the weekend.
Click to expand...
You've posted a number of times on this issue but have yet to call Woodward a racist or anti-black. Are we to expect that soon because that seems to be your calling card.
 
Cheimoon said:
Various posters have been suggesting this now, that blaming Woodward means Trump did nothing wrong. I have no idea where that's coming from; no-one suggested any such thing. If Woodward made the wrong decision, that still means Trump made decisions that were much more wrong and had much more impact. These things are not mutually exclusive.
Click to expand...

You'd wonder if people have harsh words for certain Republican leaders in certain states, or if criticism of people like that also just means that you're defending Trump.
 
Seder is right now talking about Woodward having done this exact same thing with GW Bush in 2005.
 
NotThatSoph said:
You'd wonder if people have harsh words for certain Republican leaders in certain states, or if criticism of people like that also just means that you're defending Trump.
Click to expand...
Yeah - saying that DeWine did a good job in Ohio (at least initially, I think; no idea about later or now), doesn't say anything about Republicans in general, or Trump in specific.
 
Dr. StrangeHate said:
He is a very respected journalist. This guys word carries weight and has brought down a President before.
Click to expand...

Be that as it may, all Trump needs to do is say or tweet "Fake News" and claims like that go away. This is exactly what would have occurred if this detail had been released in February or March.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.