I agree, I really don’t like people saying it was Bill Clinton, there is currently only evidence against that claim. But your second statement seems disingenuous, as there isn’t any sign that it was purely a joke, either. A better way to say your second line without showing a bias would be to say that “There is no evidence to show whether or not it was a joke, or to be taken seriously.”
To be clear, the quoted response from Mark Epstein about that email was, “For the avoidance of doubt, the reference to ‘Bubba’ in this correspondence is not, in any way, a reference to former President Bill Clinton. Any attempt to conflate that reference with President Clinton, or to read sweeping implications into them, misrepresents both the purpose and the tone of the original correspondence.”
There are a few ways to read this response, one being that it was all a joke, one being that it did happen and Bill Clinton wasn’t involved, and Putin doesn’t have the picture, and one being that it did happen, Bill Clinton wasn’t involved, and Putin does have the pictures. Without further clarification, we don’t know for certain which of these is the truth.
I do appreciate your desire to keep the facts straight.I know that it’s fun to jump to conclusions and speculate, but we are doing the credibility of anyone left of republicans a disservice when we spread lies. It makes it much easier for the Rupublicans at the top to spin a narritive that their followers can dismiss the things we say. I hate Trump as much as the next guy, but he does enough stuff to paint himself a hypocrite that there’s no need to embellish the truth.
I think the evidence against it being intended seriously is that Trump is an apparently straight man. Now, there’s a lot of reasons an apparently straight man would suck off a dude, so it’s far from impossible, but: the vast majority of apparently straight men are actually straight, and the vast majority of straight men would prefer not to have oral sex with a man, so I think this does count as evidence against it being literally true.
There’s a particular online discourse that sees Trump and MAGA as not merely being a bit hypocritical, but as being extremely hypocritical - a strand which believes that every Republican expressing homophobia as being closeted. So I think while people understand on one level that it’s not reasonable to think that some random guy who professed to be straight actually sucked off another guy on the basis of an email from someone shady, when the guy is not random but the leader of MAGA, those people instead leap on it because it fits with that hypocrisy narrative.
You’re absolutely right that we don’t know which of the possibilities is true, but I said what I did because it seems like a lot of people are just taking it at face value, which doesn’t seem smart.
I agree, I really don’t like people saying it was Bill Clinton, there is currently only evidence against that claim. But your second statement seems disingenuous, as there isn’t any sign that it was purely a joke, either. A better way to say your second line without showing a bias would be to say that “There is no evidence to show whether or not it was a joke, or to be taken seriously.”
To be clear, the quoted response from Mark Epstein about that email was, “For the avoidance of doubt, the reference to ‘Bubba’ in this correspondence is not, in any way, a reference to former President Bill Clinton. Any attempt to conflate that reference with President Clinton, or to read sweeping implications into them, misrepresents both the purpose and the tone of the original correspondence.”
There are a few ways to read this response, one being that it was all a joke, one being that it did happen and Bill Clinton wasn’t involved, and Putin doesn’t have the picture, and one being that it did happen, Bill Clinton wasn’t involved, and Putin does have the pictures. Without further clarification, we don’t know for certain which of these is the truth.
I do appreciate your desire to keep the facts straight.I know that it’s fun to jump to conclusions and speculate, but we are doing the credibility of anyone left of republicans a disservice when we spread lies. It makes it much easier for the Rupublicans at the top to spin a narritive that their followers can dismiss the things we say. I hate Trump as much as the next guy, but he does enough stuff to paint himself a hypocrite that there’s no need to embellish the truth.
I think the evidence against it being intended seriously is that Trump is an apparently straight man. Now, there’s a lot of reasons an apparently straight man would suck off a dude, so it’s far from impossible, but: the vast majority of apparently straight men are actually straight, and the vast majority of straight men would prefer not to have oral sex with a man, so I think this does count as evidence against it being literally true.
There’s a particular online discourse that sees Trump and MAGA as not merely being a bit hypocritical, but as being extremely hypocritical - a strand which believes that every Republican expressing homophobia as being closeted. So I think while people understand on one level that it’s not reasonable to think that some random guy who professed to be straight actually sucked off another guy on the basis of an email from someone shady, when the guy is not random but the leader of MAGA, those people instead leap on it because it fits with that hypocrisy narrative.
You’re absolutely right that we don’t know which of the possibilities is true, but I said what I did because it seems like a lot of people are just taking it at face value, which doesn’t seem smart.