The Trump Card...

[Turtle]

Nothing new.

It is new to the people on the Left. The people on the Left hate Fox News. They never watch it, but they know they hate it. Study after study after study shows people on the Left overwhelmingly only get their news from left leaning news outlets, so they only hear one side, whereas people on the Right get their news from both left and right leaning news outlets, so they are at least aware of both sides.

 

[Noname]

Everyone on here should love Trump because he gives us something to write about. Look at the other forum topics............almost deserted.

I noticed Fox aired his announcement of executive orders for decreases in pharmaceutical prices today. Other stations did not cover it live, nor was it mentioned on CBS news tonight. Same thing with his meeting with the President of Mexico re: new trade agreement, and his announcement of economic and education incentives for latino communities. The only multi-station coverage of that event was about Goya foods being boycotted because CEO attended and complimented Trump. CEO later said he did the same for Barack at an Obama presidential event announcing similar efforts for hispanics.

I'm not advocating for or against Trump's actions..........simply noting that the media coverage, or lack thereof, is interesting.

 

[dalscott]

It is new to the people on the Left. The people on the Left hate Fox News. They never watch it, but they know they hate it. Study after study after study shows people on the Left overwhelmingly only get their news from left leaning news outlets, so they only hear one side, whereas people on the Right get their news from both left and right leaning news outlets, so they are at least aware of both sides.

Am I supposed to laugh now or later?


Sent from my iPhone using EO Forums

 

[ATeam]

If Trump loses the election, it is going to be really interesting to see how the fight for the Trump audience develops.

"President Trump has more than six times as many followers on Twitter as he did when he was elected to office in 2016. He gained nearly 1.7 million followers in the past month, bringing his total to 80.3 million followers and making him the eighth most followed account on the site, ..." (source)

Many of those followers are actually Trump opponents keeping an eye on him. Some are news organizations watching the feed for news to report. A number of them are likely fake accounts. How many? I have no idea. But if the number of actual supporters is even half of the 80.3 million, that's a huge audience that any media organization would like to have. If Trump loses, his earned-media volume will immediately plummet. He will no longer be the news of the day. He will no longer have the ability to hold a daily briefing or special speech and have it covered live nationwide. He will no longer have the press corps traveling with him on Air Force One when he goes to an event. To counter that, he may decide to form a media organization of his own, in which case the battle for the audience between Fox and Trump will be on.

 

[ATeam]

It is new to the people on the Left. The people on the Left hate Fox News. They never watch it, but they know they hate it. Study after study after study shows people on the Left overwhelmingly only get their news from left leaning news outlets, so they only hear one side, whereas people on the Right get their news from both left and right leaning news outlets, so they are at least aware of both sides.

Are you saying the left is subject to confirmation bias but the right is not?

 

[muttly]

I watch Fox News at times and NewsMax. Two right leaning news outlets. Fox News has multiple anti Trumpers as well.as straight up news people like Bret Baier and a few others. On the radio I listen to Rush Limbaugh, Mark Levin, and occasionally Hannity. I purposely don't want CNN or MSNBC anymore. Just two garbage fire news networks that repeatedly lies to their audience. (The other major news outlets aren't much different.)
BUT, I'm bombarded with local news that slants heavily Left. When I listen to the radio while working, the news feeds at the top and bottom of the hour rely on CNN reporting. So I'm exposed to the Left's bias continuously throughout the day.

I bring this up because the Left can cocoon themselves with Left news bias and not get any exposure to other views. They're local news mostly lean Left, the radio news feeds are mostly Left. And their chosen viewing of Network news is vast majority Left.

 

[Turtle]

Are you saying the left is subject to confirmation bias but the right is not?

No, I'm saying what the studies have shown. I didn't draw any conclusions. I'd say that everybody, regardless of who you are or your political leanings, are subject to confirmation bias. If I were to draw a conclusion from the studies, I would say that those on the Right tend to be at least open to and willing to listen to other points of view, whereas the Left tends to be rather closed minded to opposing viewpoints, to the point of actively not seeking out those viewpoints. It's a conclusion backed up by the Left routinely shutting down free speech they disagree with, including attempts to silence conservative voices on the airwaves.

 

[ATeam]

No, I'm saying what the studies have shown.

What studies?

 

[ATeam]

After the first coronavirus aid bill was passed and signed by the president, the Democratic-controlled House passed its second coronavirus aid bill in May. The Republican-controlled Senate took no action on it and as of today, two months after the House acted, has not produced a bill of its own in response. Consequently, the federal unemployment benefits an estimated 25 million Americans now receive have expired, while legislators went home on break. It is reported that the reason there is no Senate bill is the White House and Senate republicans do not agree on what it should say.

They had two months to cobble together a response to the House bill but failed to do so. How does that help Trump or the Republicans as Election Day approaches? Put another way, what are the Republicans not seeing? Why have they set themselves to be easily tagged as the gang that can't shoot straight? These are professional politicians who presumably know how to read their constituents' sentiment and act in their interests. And even if the Republicans are presumed to be acting in their own best interests, what's going on with them to so badly drop the ball like this? Why are Trump and the Senate Republicans who have marched in near lock-step failing to provide a meaningful aid bill now?

These questions have nothing to do with the content of the bills the Democrats or Republicans may include. It just strikes me as truly strange that 100 days away from Election Day, the Republicans -- seasoned political professionals all -- are dropping the ball like this. 100 days out and no response? Unemployment aid expiring and no response? A Democratic proposal two months old and a national emergency underway, and no response? How are people so politically experienced acting as if they don't know a damn thing?

It's like they are driving a truck and see a distant moose walk onto the roadway, but it is not even entering their minds to step on the brakes.

 

[muttly]

It's time to get back to **** work and to get back to **** school. There, I said it.

 

[skyraider]

If anyone missed it, here is the definition of Confirmation Bias
Confirmation Bias

Confirmation bias is the tendency to search for, interpret, favor, and recall information that confirms or supports one's prior beliefs or values. It is an important type of cognitive bias that has a significant effect on the proper functioning of society by distorting evidence-based decision-making. People display this bias when they gather or remember information selectively, or when they interpret it in a biased way. For example, a person may cherry-pick empirical data that supports one's belief, ignoring the remainder of the data that is not supportive. People also tend to interpret ambiguous evidence as supporting their existing position. The effect is strongest for desired outcomes, for emotionally charged issues, and for deeply entrenched beliefs.

 

[Turtle]

What studies?

The studies that show where people get their news. Pew Research has done the most exhaustive and reliable studies, but there are others. But then there are studies like the laughable one from NYU which studied thousands of Twitter accounts, and concluded that, despite liberals not following conservative Twitter accounts, because people occasionally see a Tweet from an opposing viewpoint, that there is no news information bubble in America.

Some glaring examples of liberals not even being aware of the other side are, because they refuse to be open to conservative news sources and their liberal news sources won't tell the news accurately, 66% of liberals believe the Fine People Hoax is not a hoax, that Trump actually referred to White Nationalists as "fine people," and 59% of liberals still, to this day, 2020, believe that Trump and Russia colluded to steal the election. Just the other day my stepdad mentioned Russia collusion, and asked him how he reconciled the Mueller Report that found no collusion, and he said the Mueller Report was BS, and that there is evidence of collusion, but they just haven't found it, yet. Okayeee.

But the big one is really the Fine People Hoax. There are liberals, in the 50% range, who are still completely unaware that it's a hoax, perpetuated by the media. And even when liberals do discover that its a hoax, either by reading the transcript of watching the full video (which liberal media refuses to show), cognitive dissonance sets in. And the cognitive dissonance is funny to watch in real time, too You show them the transcript of the full video, and by the end they get weird looks on their faces, the eyes go blank, and you can see the brain rebooting, trying to figure out a way to make the reality go away.

 

[ATeam]

Can you provide a link to one of the better studies? It seems preposterous to me what you are suggesting. I'm interested in learning more.

 

[Turtle]

100 days out and no response? Unemployment aid expiring and no response? A Democratic proposal two months old and a national emergency underway, and no response? How are people so politically experienced acting as if they don't know a damn thing?

It's not a question of what the Republican's aren't seeing or don't know anything, it's just the opposite (which the liberals media won't even report). There was, in fact, an immediate response from Senate Republicans to the House Dems' bill. The Senate Republicans laughed at it and said it would go nowhere. If the bill was solely about fiscal coronavirus relief, it would have a chance, but nearly the-thirds of the money in the bill is, as the Republicans put it, "a liberal wish list" of partisan politics and social justice initiatives. For example, one part of the bill mandates nationwide mail-in voting with the only certification as to the voter's valid voting status is the self-certification from the voter than they are who they say they are and that they are eligible to vote in this country.

The House Bill was a result of zero bipartisan negotiation, and even 14 Democrats opposed it because it wandered too far from coronavirus relief and moved into areas like increasing current welfare benefits, like food stamps, and dramatically widened the scope of who is eligible for those benefits, a bailout for the USPS, repeal the cap on SALT taxes, it includes a moratorium on debt collections, while at the same time it creates a new Fed facility to provide direct relief to to the debt collection industry, it prohibits negative credit reporting and all medical credit reporting, it expands PPP to cover nonprofits of all sizes and virtually all local news media. It also provides massive aid for "community development" and for minority-owned businesses, and mandates that minority-owned businesses be given preferential treatment for interest-free loans and forgivable loans even if they have bad credit and cannot qualify for loans. The list goes on and on. And the Republicans are most definitely seeing it.

 

[ATeam]

It's not a question of what the Republican's aren't seeing or don't know anything, it's just the opposite (which the liberals media won't even report). There was, in fact, an immediate response from Senate Republicans to the House Dems' bill. The Senate Republicans laughed at it and said it would go nowhere.

OK. I'll grant that response. In my post above, the response I had in mind was more like an actual relief bill that would be signed into law soon enough (like last week or earlier) that would give all Americans an idea of what or what is not coming next. What we have now is more uncertainty and the Republicans looking like the gang that can't shoot straight. I'm no fan of another
$3 trillion of spending of any kind, but at least the Dems presented something while the Republicans keep the country guessing. No way that helps them or Trump.

 

[Turtle]

Can you provide a link to one of the better studies? It seems preposterous to me what you are suggesting. I'm interested in learning more.

This is a graphic from 2014, and it hasn't changed much. It shows 51% of conservatives get at least some of their news from sources they don't even trust (presumably liberal sources), whereas only 30% of liberals do.

Here's an interesting report from Pew on specific news sources, and the trust of those sources. One interesting conclusion, which if you're not careful can be misleading, is,"Liberals, overall, trust a much larger mix of news outlets than others do." That's because conservatives go mostly with Fox News, because it's really the only major game in town, whereas liberals get their news from a much wider swath of news outlets, namely the three broadcast networks, CNN, MSNBC, WaPo, NYT, NPR, The Guardian, Bloomberg. But all of those varied liberal news sources report the same narratives, sometimes word for word. So it would be a mistake to think "variety of sources" = "variety of viewpoints."

I'm sure (well, not really) that you've seen those story snippets where something happens that liberals find uncomfortable, and you see where the three broadcast networks spent a combined total of like 73 seconds, CNN and MSNBC didn't cover it all, and Fox News had hours of coverage on it. One recent example of that is the four executive orders that Trump signed the other day regarding lowering prescription prices in the US. The three broadcast networks didn't mention it, neither did CNN. MSNBC had 16 seconds on it to say that it's meaningless and will be challenged in court. On CNN's website, the story is there, if you go deep enough into the Politics pages of the site.

Another important key in the Pew report that can easily be overlooked is liberals are far more likely to unfriend, unfollow or actually drop real-life friends who disagree with their politics, meaning, they literally shut out opposing views.

Likewise, another important key that could be construed to be more important than it actually is, is conservatives are more likely to see like-minded news and posts on their Facebook. But that is A), a function of the Facebook algorithm and not conservatives, and B), according to the underlying data, is virtually the same for liberals' Facebook feeds.

 

[muttly]

I think the Republicans are interested in some type of extension of unemployment benefits, but at a reduced amount. Not something where someone can get paid more for not working or disincentives someone from working. AND ANOTHER STIMULUS CHECK
And just back the Brinks truck up to Bezos' house after all this is over with.

 

[Turtle]

OK. I'll grant that response. In my post above, the response I had in mind was more like an actual relief bill that would be signed into law soon enough (like last week or earlier) that would give all Americans an idea of what or what is not coming next. What we have now is more uncertainty and the Republicans looking like the gang that can't shoot straight.

Granted, the Republicans have a majority in the Senate, but slow and incompetent responses from the Senate is hardly exclusive to Republicans. It happens every year with every mandatory deadline spending bill, regardless of who holds the majority. It even happened during Obama's first 2 years when the Dems had a super majority in the Senate. They're all, every last one of them, incompetent boobs.

I'm no fan of another $3 trillion of spending of any kind, but at least the Dems presented something while the Republicans keep the country guessing. No way that helps them or Trump.

The House Dems passed an partisan, ideological Wish List Bill that couldn't pass the Senate, and they did it so people could point to it and go, "See! At least the Democrats presented something!"

 

[Turtle]

On a not-totally unrelated note, for context...

Do you remember when Bill Clinton refused to sign into law the Partial Birth Abortion Bill, that would have outlawed partial birth abortions? He was excoriated by Republicans (and low information voters). The problem with the bill was, it ALSO included a conservative wish list of things completely unrelated to partial birth abortions. I was no fan of Clinton, but he was spot-on for refusing to sign it. That was when Clinton unsuccessfully pushed for a presidential line item veto, the same as most state governors have. He would have signed that bill if he had line item veto power to get rid of the extraneous crap in it.

 

[Turtle]

This is quite dated and obviously no longer fits the narrative that the Press was so desperately trying to create for a while there, but even so, I still think this is both hilarious and genius. I don't know who did it, but it's great.