El Presidente Trump criticized the media over his Putin love summit in a tweet just now.
Here’s what he said:
I got severely criticized by the Fake News Media for being too nice to President Putin. In the Old Days they would call it Diplomacy. If I was loud & vicious, I would have been criticized for being too tough. Remember when they said I was too tough with Chairman Kim? Hypocrites!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 20, 2018
He has somewhat of a point – the media is definitely biased against him, and many pundits are going INSANELY over the top in criticizing his Putin love summit. However, this is a classic “false choice” fallacy of rhetoric. This is a favorite of political discourse these days. He’s pretending as if there are only two choices – spitting angry tweets out, like he did at Kim Jong Un, or slobbering up to a dictator and throwing your intelligence agencies under a bus. That’s just absurd. You can criticize both and not be a hypocrite because there are literally millions of other options besides those two. False choice.
AND it undermines his point that he keeps having to walk back his comments and explain and correct and change his statements. That is not the sign of successful diplomacy. Also, #MAGA!!
UPDATE:
Now he’s laying down rules for the NFL on kneeling, because that’s what small government conservatives would want.
The NFL National Anthem Debate is alive and well again - can’t believe it! Isn’t it in contract that players must stand at attention, hand on heart? The $40,000,000 Commissioner must now make a stand. First time kneeling, out for game. Second time kneeling, out for season/no pay!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 20, 2018
He’s not having a good week on Putin, I could see wanting to start a firestorm on the NFL again. I imagine he’ll talk more about this going forth…