Some years ago The Atlantic published a piece claiming that Trump described Americans killed in war as ‘losers’ and ‘suckers.’ Trump has denied these claims and his supporters rushed to defend him. As would be expected, people tend to believe or reject the claims based on their ideology rather than on considerations of the evidence. I will endeavor to assess the claims philosophically.
In support of the claims is the fact that the Atlantic is a credible source that engages in careful fact checking. The story has also been corroborated by other news outlets. Trump and his supporters denied the claims. From a critical thinking standpoint, this dispute comes down to an assessment of relative credibility of the Atlantic and Trump. Looked at objectively, Trump lies regularly and the Atlantic carefully fact checks its claims. As such, this is a major plus in favor of the Atlantic. Trump’s supporters assert, without evidence, that the Atlantic is fake news but the burden of proof was on them to respond to the evidence in favor of the Atlantic’s credibility. If the Atlantic is fake news, they should be able to present evidence establishing this. An obvious problem is that Trump’s supporters tend to reject any claims unfavorable to Trump as false while those who loath Trump tend to accept such claims because of their dislike of Trump. For those between these extremes, the Atlantic would presumably win the credibility battle.
Counting against the Atlantic is the fact that it has a known center-left bias. As such, the Atlantic does have a motivation to be critical of Trump and this lowers its credibility. Trump and his supporters are, obviously, biased in Trump’s favor which lowers their credibility. As such, it comes down to assessing the relative bias and its impact on the credibility of each source. Once again, Trump’s supporters will tend to see the Atlantic as utterly biased against Trump and those who loath Trump will take him as utterly biased. Those in the middle would seem likely to favor the Atlantic here.
Also counting against the Atlantic is the fact that the sources are anonymous. As such, we must rely on a double argument from authority: the claims are supported by the claimed expertise of the author in assessing the anonymous sources and the expertise (broadly speaking) of the anonymous sources. Since we do not know the identity of the sources, we cannot assess their credibility ourselves and must rely on the credibility of the author. While some might be tempted to reject anonymous sources out of hand, this would be an error since anonymous sources have a legitimate role in reporting in cases in which the sources could be harmed if they were identified. Trump would have taken action against anyone who revealed these negative facts. While the use of anonymous sources does not count against the credibility of the claims, their identification and confirmation would greatly increase credibility. And, of course, their identification and disconfirmation would reduce the credibility of the claims. Having a recording of what Trump said would also have a large impact on the credibility of the claims, although one should consider the possibility of technological trickery.
Counting in favor of the claims is Trump’s confirmed negative statements about veterans and, most especially prisoners of war. Trump famously attacked former POW John McCain, asserting that he likes people that were not captured. Trump also has an established history of disrespecting veterans, soldiers and the military. Trump’s seemingly complete focus on defining all interactions as transactional is consistent with the claims attributed to him, as is his well known cruelty and lack of empathy. The claims attributed to Trump are completely consistent with Trump’s character and his past claims, which increases the credibility of these claims about him. As such, it is reasonable to believe that the article is accurate.
While Trump and his supporters are very pro-military, Trump has made it clear that he is anti-veteran. The Musk-Trump regime’s cuts have caused significant and ongoing harm to veterans, and Trump expressed no concern for this harm. As such, his current actions lend credence to this past claim.
Not only this man is a complete fool for saying stupid things in a reckless way that leaves the rest of us utterly astonished; he’s a ‘double idiot’ for denying the very stupid things he says. It betrays a complete lack of character or maturity. Most people, including me, have said stupid things at one time or another, but to be in advanced age and be as dumb as one was in earlier age, or worse, well, that’s not so good. And most of us would not deny what we clearly expressed in public, for it would be an insult to everybody’s intelligence, i.e. he must think people are idiots, which is probably an accurate claim. After all, he thinks he’s extremely intelligent, he probably thinks he’s a genius, and consequently that people are idiots, and that cannot tell what one said or did not say.
He really ‘trumps’ them all: for a president of the United States to call his own fallen soldiers ‘suckers’ and ‘losers’, the very same men and women who gave their lives for America, the very country he’s ‘leading’…..the level of stupidity is just incredible.
Trump, the genius of stupid.