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Trump threatening NBC?

I don't ask to make headway. I just want to be on record disagreeing with the premise.
Then note your disagreement and leave it at that.

Would have spared us a couple dozen useless posts full of nonsense from you and all the replies.
 
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Nope.

You are choosing to have it matter to you. I am not. If we both choose to not let it matter to us, then his opinion weighs as much to this cohort as someone on a liberal forum we don't know.

This is stupid and you know it. I can choose to ignore someone on a forum, I can't choose to ignore the president.

Hans
 
This is stupid and you know it. I can choose to ignore someone on a forum, I can't choose to ignore the president.

Hans

BTC is about top tell you that of course you can.
Which is technically true, and yet so, so wrong.
 
There's no instance I can recall of a president shutting down something comparable to Infowars. But there is an instance of a presidential candidate doing so.

In 1964 Barry Goldwater ran for president as the Republican candidate. He was far to the right on many issues, and many of his supporters were even farther to the right. He was opposed to civil rights laws and the civil rights movement, believed in a communist conspiracy to take over our country and the world, and suggested in an interview that if he were president he'd use nuclear weapons in Vietnam.

Many on the left feared Goldwater might actually be crazy enough to do it. And a couple of months before the 1964 presidential election, Fact magazine published an issue devoted to saying just that. The issue consisted of a 20-page article from publisher Ralph Ginzburg quoting many of the crazy things Goldwater had said over the years and a 42 page article quoting the opinions of more than 100 psychiatrists regarding Goldwater's mental condition (most of whom shared Fact's view that he was not of sound enough mind to be a good president).

Goldwater sued. In 1967 he won $1 in compensatory damages and $75,000 in punitive damages, which I believe was a key reason why Ginzburg stopped publishing Fact magazine later that year.

Fact magazine specialized in somewhat sensational articles on social and political issues of its time (with a little sex thrown in). Here's an online item I was able to locate which gives a little sense of what the articles were like. Fact was not nearly as into crazy conspiracy theories and dishonest misinformation as Infowars, but both strike me as similar in being sensationalistic outlets printing stories designed to attack people they dislike rather than news outlets printing news stories.

I was (and still am) a fan of Fact magazine, which printed a number of valuable articles the mainstream media of the time wouldn't touch, but I think Goldwater was within his rights to file suit against Fact and I do not think his action in doing so is equivalent to what Trump is threatening. If anyone (citizen, politician, or even president) were to take similar action against Infowars and as a result Infowars ceased to be I would not have a first amendment problem with that.
Interesting.

Gawker was driven out of business by a lawsuit that bankrupted them. It's not quite the same as being shut down via some government action but has the same effect of quashing free speech.
 
Why is it so wrong? I do it often.
In that case, Q.E.D. [emoji16][emoji28]


You CAN ignore the president.
You CAN ignore the man with a gun to your head.
You CAN act like the black Knight and ignore your severed limbs on the ground.
A starving person CAN ignore their stomach pains until they die.
A rape victim CAN ignore the man as he violates her and continue planning the agenda for today's meetings.
You CAN ignore the man with the power to nuke the world or completely devestste your way of life or destroy your country.

But that would be stupid.

Sent from my Nexus 5X using Tapatalk
 
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Let me correct. What Trump said does not compare to a gun analogy because there was no threat or implied threat.

There is no implied threat in the gun analogy. The gun was just resting there. No threat. So the analogy all holds. Neither is an implied threat.
 
There is no implied threat in the gun analogy. The gun was just resting there. No threat. So the analogy all holds. Neither is an implied threat.

If so, then have absolutely zero worry in this scenario. You defined all the parameters. It would be fighting the hypothetical to turn around and try and say it was an implied threat.
 
But that would be stupid.


BTC displays and advocates a rather extreme level of willful ignorance. Please don't encourage his nonsense. Please don't be a willful participant in his degradation of every damn discussion.
 
If so, then have absolutely zero worry in this scenario. You defined all the parameters. It would be fighting the hypothetical to turn around and try and say it was an implied threat.

And yet, even with no implied threat, ignoring a gun pointed at you is a theoretical option, but not a real one.
 
And yet, even with no implied threat, ignoring a gun pointed at you is a theoretical option, but not a real one.

? It is your hypothetical. There isn't threat, right? I reject the premises that somehow tie it to Trump so I am perfectly happy to accept whatever conclusions from your hypothetical. They have no relevance to me outside this hypothetical.
 
Sure, but that's irrelevant to Travis's post. He said NBC and Infowars are quite different. That's a statement about the two (broadly speaking) media outlets, not about who's clamoring to shut them down.

You're right that no one who's in a position of power has advocating shutting down Infowars, but the question is this: If shutting down NBC[1] because of what they say is a violation of the First, then isn't shutting down Infowars[2] because of what they say a violation of the First?

Assumption: the shut down comes from the government and "what they say" hasn't been a violation of the law despite First Amendment rights.

In any case, I agree with your main point. When the President advocates shutting down media sources he doesn't like, that's a hell of a lot more troubling than when some nobody on a nothing internet forum does the same.

[1] Not that it's clear how it could be done.
[2] Ditto.

I just felt it needed to be pointed out. NBC gave context for why the SOS thinks Trump is an idiot. Infowars thought Obama was going to take over the USA via Jade Helm. Any notion they are equivalent is specious.
 
I just felt it needed to be pointed out. NBC gave context for why the SOS thinks Trump is an idiot. Infowars thought Obama was going to take over the USA via Jade Helm. Any notion they are equivalent is specious.

There are people who read what you wrote and agree 100%. Some of them think nbc is the liars in this scenario. Almost no one probably thinks they are the same.
 
BTC displays and advocates a rather extreme level of willful ignorance. Please don't encourage his nonsense. Please don't be a willful participant in his degradation of every damn discussion.

I'm not sorry that I often disagree with people here. What you call a discussion is a big circle of agreement.
 

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