You can't claim he doesn't mean what he says literally after he shut down the government quite clearly over a literal wall he wants built. Or has harangued the Justice Department in public over not going after Hillary Clinton as an extension of his "Lock her up" campaign. Or his attempt to literally repeal & replace Obama Care. Regardless of whether you're pro or con on these and all of his other policy statements, it's clear through his words and his actions that he means it all literally. Up until it either a) becomes clear it's simply not going to happen (Mexico paying for the wall) or b) a statement is revealed to be patently untrue (see his various stories about his involvement with payoffs for affairs).

I think you’re mixing remarks with his stated policies. Policies they published during the campaign. Remarks are comments. That said, for politicians there is a certain fluidity in meaning. “I actually did vote for the $87 billion before I voted against it.”

I don't think you can separate what he says about his policies from the actual policies. They are part of a whole. "fluidity in meaning" is another way of saying they don't mean what they say. That doesn't mean they don't intend what they say to be taken literally. I don't buy the idea that people vote for candidates thinking "I know he/she was just making empty promises." The public may accept that politicians aren't always able to deliver on their promises, but not that the promises themselves were just some vague metaphorical allusion with no real intent behind them.

> His comms is very non literal

If that argument held any water we'd have to erase all attempted communication-based crimes: blackmail, libel, bribery, etc.

"Yes, my Email said I wanted to blackmail Jeff Bezos, but I wasn't being literal your honor" -> "OK, you're free to go"

Sorry, words matter especially when they have consequences and impact people's lives.

Let's put it this way, if he wanted to command the GRU to do some work for him, would he not be better off going though his channels rather than making on off-hand remark in front of an audience?

I'm sure he could use steganography to signal this or that, if need be.

I mean, come on, are you going to say Waters was "threatening" here: "I did not threaten [Trump] constituents and supporters. I do that all the time, but I didn't do that that time," Waters said to laughter from a crowd in Los Angeles."

You have to take context into consideration.

I think he likes pushing the envelope to see how far the crowd will let him go.

He's widely known to have paid for and used dirt on his enemies to influence things to his advantage.

I think like most con men he likes to boast about what he's doing even if it's illegal. Or after getting away with it for so long and seeing others do it too, it just feels normal.

I think he did use back channels with Rodger Stone to execute the crime, but he probably didn't even know it was a crime because he's been getting dirt on people his whole career. The only problem with this time was it was a Presidential election and a foreign power.

The example Thiel used in the original "seriously but not literally" argument was the wall. Of course Trump wasn't talking about a literal wall, he said, it was more of a metaphor for, you know, something.

This argument was always embarrassingly stupid, but anyone still making it after Trump shut down the government for a month over literal wall construction has forfeited their right to be taken seriously at all.

Sadly, you'll still find people (even in this thread) that claim "of course Trump's campaign wasn't meant to be taken literally." With statements like "if you took what Trump said on the campaign literally, then you missed the point."

So then if _The Wall_ was figurative, why did he shut down the government over its funding?

"No he meant that one literally."

Okay... So what about the fact that the wall would be funded by Mexico? He claimed that he would literally make them write a check.

"That was obviously figurative."

An exhausting stretch of logic by those who can't burden themselves with introspection.

Like any politician, the "Mexico would pay for it" was an "argument" to get support. Did supporters care if Mexico itself would pay? No. But it fit their sentiment. It's win-win for him because the only people who would "care" would be people against the wall who politically don't matter.

It's like when Dems say they want to abolish ICE. That's what their base want to hear. Do they really think ICE is going to be abolished? No, do they like hearing that because it rings nicely in their ears. yes!

Let's abolish ICE is the lefts version of "Mexico will pay for the wall". When they say Abolish ICE, they mean we'll (try to) do the dreamer things and we'll be less literal on refugee interpretation (and include economic migrants as definition of a refugee) for example. And, if it doesn't happen (not enough internal support) we'll blame the Repubs, no loss on their side. This is how political comms works.

Don't try and hang them on each and every word. You'll miss what they are saying.

> It's like when Dems say they want to abolish ICE. That's what their base want to hear. Do they really think ICE is going to be abolished?

Yes, they do.

They may not think the functions are going to be eliminated, or most of the rank and file staff removed from government service, any more than when the predecessors of various parts of ICE, like the INS, were abolished before it.

ICE as an organization was created in 2003, many people literally want to abolish it. The equivalence you are trying to draw here in no way exists.

You're basically saying "one side says what they want to do even if they know they can't get it, the other says whatever they think you want to hear"

It's interesting how many words you use to describe what in plain terms are blatant lies and deceptions.

It is intellectually dishonest to attribute literal intent to some of his statements, but others made with the same bombastic style only obviously more ridiculous are hand-waved away as "it was the spirit of the thing he meant, not literally". And whether or not his followers care about Mexico paying for the wall, his various statements clearly indicated a literal intent on the topic. And while some on the left may mean "let's massively reorganize ICE and rethink its operational policies", it's clear that some also mean this literally.

You're right about Occasio-Cortez: she is shaping up to be about as bad as Trump in this respect. I'm not quite sure which of them is worse, but I know the prospect of her someday getting to the White House is a chilling prospect, even though my political leanings are in that direction. She appears to be about as dangerously ignorant (and perhaps callous) of facts of situations. The only mitigating factor for her is that perhaps experience will temper this, and maybe she is just uninformed but not unwilling to learn.

> She appears to be about as dangerously ignorant (and perhaps callous) of facts of situations

Citation needed.

AOC is not eligible to run for president until she is 35. These facts might calm your fears.

I disagree with Thiel there, His base, and most independents want a literal wall (and, as he claims, Dems used to be for a wall) But his speeches are littered with these blue collar type speech patterns (boasting, exaggeration, put-downs, etc., when trying to “win” an argument).

> His base, and most independents want a literal wall

Can you back up that most independents want a wall? The polling I've seen says otherwise.

"CBS News polling from mid-November found that a majority -- 59 percent of Americans -- oppose building a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border. It's a partisan issue, though. A large majority of Republicans support the wall -- 79 percent. A majority of independents -- 66 percent -- oppose the wall, and 84 percent of Democrats are also against it."

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/cbs-news-poll-americans-dont-su...

I think you are confusing 'blue collar' with narcissism, arrogance, entitlement, laziness and stupidity.

Can we stop saying that "blue collar" people delve in boasting and exaggeration ? Most blue collar people I meet are very polite, mild mannered and focused on executing their tasks. The only people who talk like Trump are narcissists.

> This argument was always embarrassingly stupid, but anyone still making it after Trump shut down the government for a month over literal wall construction has forfeited their right to be taken seriously at all.

Whether his statements during the campaign were taken literally or not it appears he was taken seriously by enough people to win him the nomination and the election. I think more than anything they bought into his intent. And his values however we may choose to the define them resonated with them.

What’s really hilarious is that the wall was originally intended to be figurative. His staff came up with the idea as a way of keeping Trump’s scattered brain focused on talking about immigration. Except the moron ran with it.

This analysis has some merit if you don't jump to the conclusion that it's praise. The presumed reason for the downvotes is the issue of accountability. A President who can't be taken literally isn't viable. Oh and the part about Kerry and Bolton is nonsense. But other than that, it seems like obvious stuff.

Why is the HN echo chamber downvoting you? /s

Because what mc32 is doing is a rather cheap rhetorical tactic: asserting that, when Mr. Trump says something I (for the appropriate I) like, he is to be believed, but when he says something unappealing or rediculous, he's joking. It's a relative of the "no true Scotsman".

It's also a bit of a problem for a representative government, since it means you cannot take any of Trump's statements as a forecast of his policies.

Not quite. Trump is problematic. While he has attempted to execute his campaign promises, getting there the road is littered with inconsistency, opportunism, reversal, and some fluidity. But, but people take him too literally in the minutiae. The goal may be literal, but the tactics in getting there are not, the supporting verbiage is not. Counterintuitively the "vision" may be.

Like I said elsewhere, it's akin to the Dems "We'll abolish ICE". Some people will believe that literally, but it's not meant to be taken that way. They mean some reform and some policy changes. A redressing, but that's not what the base hears.

Are you sure “abolish ICE” is not meant to be taken literally? I’ve seen no indication of that and I sure thought it was literal.

The only confusion I’ve seen is from people who think “abolish ICE” is equivalent to “end all border and immigration enforcement.”

Well, now were' playing Trump's semantics, aren't we? It's not the INS, it's ICE. AS if they'll lay off 20k and then what? Nope. They may temper some things, do the dreamer things they promised, accommodate and redefine what refugee means (to include some poor economic migrants, but probably not rich economic migrants, etc.)

I don’t understand this response. What Trump’s semantics are we playing? Why is the idea an automatic “nope”?