There's truth in the idea that Trump supporting an idea made it toxic even if it was a good idea, but it didn't happen in a vacuum. It happened because the anti-Trump media attacked everything Trump said, whether it was sensible or not. They could have taken a neutral perspective and assessed his speech on its merits, but they did not and they bear some repsonsibility for that.

(To be clear: I'm not a Trump supporter and I think that when he was right it was by accident rather than design. However, many media organizations shamed themselves by embracing partisanship and abandoning even the pretence of neutrality).

Are there a lot of examples of this? In general when Trump said the right thing it seems like the media didn't go too far overboard. The most obvious example was about vaccination itself. While people were worried that he would push out a vaccine that wasn't ready, people were on board with vaccination.

That said, I do think that Trump's brand was largely about division on social issues. So to that extent he often put at the forefront of his narratives positions that forced you to take a side. E.g., should Kaepernick be fired or not. Etc...

> In general when Trump said the right thing it seems like the media didn't go too far overboard.

I'd say those aren't the problem so much as the borderline cases where there are true and untrue interpretations of a certain statement, but of course they ran with the most uncharitable possible interpretation because they're convinced Trump is a ruthless dictator in the making.

I think media treatment of him was really weird. Some things were exaggerated, but something like suggesting, during the '16 campaign, in a plainly favorable tone, that his supporters might assassinate his opponent if she won, should have been the only thing anyone wanted to ask him or his proxies about until he was hounded out of public life. Instead it was dropped surprisingly quickly.

I think the media treatment was fair and evenhanded. I think what has changed with the media is that nothing sticks for very long. As you note, what might have been a big story in the past has a really short news cycle now. What was remarkable about Trump was the shear volume of stories -- each lasted for days, but was then followed up immediately (or concurrently) with another. Even Jan 6 is having trouble sticking in the news.

I think this was one of the issues that the Republicans ran into with the election. They thought that certain stories about Biden would stick and last. They missed that none of these stories last any more. You need a huge volume of stories to paint a narrative over a long period of time.

Someone else mentioned the uncharitable interpretations of things he said. That was earned over years of such statements. It wasn't a new isolated incident.

> Someone else mentioned the uncharitable interpretations of things he said. That was earned over years of such statements. It wasn't a new isolated incident.

You're right to such a degree that I distinctly remember my first impression of him being formed by Rush Limbaugh (my dad was a listener) making fun of what a dishonest, sleazy joke of a human being Trump was. Must have been some time in the 90s. His reputation was decades in the making, and at one time that take on him was practically universal. The transformation was fascinating to watch.

(can't edit, but not sure if the DV was over disbelief or for some other reason—if the latter, cool, no problem, I take no issue with whatever your reason was; if the former, it's on YouTube and it's exactly what I've said it is, though on review technically he may merely have been suggesting that the "2nd amendment people" [as he put it] might shoot Supreme Court justices... so, you know, not exactly better. It's not clear which of those—or, maybe both—were what he had in mind when he said it.)

Those aren't examples of the media gaslighting people. Those are about the CDC and FDA saying they aren't effective (or not proven effective). You're conflating the media with scientific advisory boards -- and notably those under Trump's own watch at the time.

Media gas lighting would be if the CDC/FDA/etc said that Ivermectin was effective and the media saying it wasn't or not reporting on it.

The media gaslighting part is continuing to call ivermectin a horse medicine to disparage it, when it is also approved as anti-parasite medication for humans (if not for COVID.)

People were ordering from livestock suppliers in preparations designed to treat horse conditions, to the extent stockists started running out and started demanding people provide evidence they actually owned a horse to buy it. I mean, dog food is just meat from the same animals humans eat, but it's still a news story if people decide they'd rather eat Pedigree Chum than take nutrition advice from doctors.

This is an example of when people say, "I'll do my own research" I often roll my eyes. First, about the site you gave, here's what BMJ has to say about this site:

"Different websites (such as https://ivmmeta.com/, https://c19ivermectin.com/, https://tratamientotemprano.org/estudios-ivermectina/, among others) have conducted meta-analyses with ivermectin studies, showing unpublished colourful forest plots which rapidly gained public acknowledgement and were disseminated via social media, without following any methodological or report guidelines. These websites do not include protocol registration with methods, search strategies, inclusion criteria, quality assessment of the included studies nor the certainty of the evidence of the pooled estimates. Prospective registration of systematic reviews with or without meta-analysis protocols is a key feature for providing transparency in the review process and ensuring protection against reporting biases, by revealing differences between the methods or outcomes reported in the published review and those planned in the registered protocol. These websites show pooled estimates suggesting significant benefits with ivermectin, which has resulted in confusion for clinicians, patients and even decision-makers. This is usually a problem when performing meta-analyses which are not based in rigorous systematic reviews, often leading to spread spurious or fallacious findings.36"

Furthermore, in good faith I went and randomly looked at one of the studies cited that sourced a reasonable journal: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/jmv.27469

The c19ivermectin site misrepresents the results from the study. To quote the actual study: "However, a mortality benefit was not seen with ivermectin treatment before and after PSM (p values = 0.07 and 0.11, respectively). ICU admission, and intubation rate were not significantly different between the groups (p = 0.49, and p = 1.0, respectively). No differences were found between groups regarding the length of hospital stay, ICU admission, intubation rate, and in-hospital mortality."

Additionally the study notes: "The ivermectin group was more likely to have bacterial pneumonia complications compared to the control group (43% vs. 23%, p = 0.02). Eight patients had a pulmonary embolism or deep vein thrombosis in the ivermectin group, and the ivermectin group more frequently received therapeutic anticoagulation therapy than the control group. In addition, 13 patients had acute kidney injury in the ivermectin group."

The website you provided has a very biased take on just the one study I looked at. It's hard for me to take it seriously as an unbiased meta-analysis of ivermectin.

This is cherry picking at its worst. I found one bad study from 78! studies. Therefore, I will ignore all studies. Even worse, none of your double blind RCTs are multi-site western studies. So, I will ignore all of them. Do you know what? After 2 years. 2 years, there has not been even one WESTERN double blind RCT of Ivermectin for Covid that has reported its data. Not one. There are 3 ongoing - Oxford (paused now, because they cannot get supply - what a joke), Covid-OUT (reporting in maybe 2 months), and NIH (reporting in 2023). The Together trial finished in August, but they are still sitting on the data - why?

Besides those trials, there are 87! studies from lots of countries. One really good observational study with ~200k participants (120k in the treatment group) from Itaj Brazil for IVM as prophylaxis. Results for propensity matched data were hospitalizations down by 85%, and for non propensity matched 50%. But nobody has written about it. The same goes for Fluvoxamine, which has great data. As does Melatonin and Curcumin. Lots of treatment and prophylaxis options out there.

And yes, i am vaxxed. But I despair at this notion that it is vax or treatment. I chose both.

Reference:

https://www.cureus.com/articles/82162-ivermectin-prophylaxis...

Here somebody took the time to look at 30 of these studies. It is an interesting read.

https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/ivermectin-much-more-t...

That's a well-written hit piece by Scott Alexander. This isn't big tobacco of old who transparently lie. This article gives short biased summaries of all papers, and leaves out all the good results of many papers. Even well run studies, like Chaccour, that shown stat sign reduction in cough and ansomnia in only N=24, he spins as a negative result. And the Italian study that just barely misses stat sig reduction in viral load - well he doesn't tell you that, does he?

Scott also believes the benefit from IVM is because of worm reduction. The Ijatai study with >120k subjects is an area of Brazil with no worms, proving that is transparent nonsense.

I randomly picked the first study of a journal id heard of. I’m not going to read all 78. It’s not cherry picking when you do that.

Irrespective of whether it's random or cherry picked, you can't discount a mountain of evidence from N=1. That is the playbook Big Pharma have succeeded with so far. Find one trial with evidence of fraud (El-Gazaar DBRCT) and then discount all other clinical trials on IVM for Covid. The media bought it hook, line, and sinker.

I absolutely can discount a mountain of evidence from N=1. If you bring me 10 candidates for a job and say they can all type 100 WPM and I say, "OK, give me that guy in the middle" and give him a typing test and he types 20 WPM, I'm discounting the rest of the candidates because I no longer trust the source.

Furthermore, the issue isn't the study. It's how they misrepresented the results of the study. Another example, it would be like if you give me a paper and I go to the middle of the paper and it says, "Nazi's saved millions of Jews from the rein of terror of the Hawaiians" -- I'm going to discount the paper because I think the editorializing is misleading. I don't need to read the rest of the paper -- unless you tell me that the section I read was meant to be satire.

This is why credibility matters. If that site was Nature and I looked at one study and there was something wrong with it I might be inclined to look at a few more randomly. But given that people have a finite amount of time, when you present something it better be accurate. And when it is accurate, you'll gain credibility. But if the first thing I look at is misleading -- I don't have a lot of patience to wade through data ... especially when other sources also say that you're representations are biased.

The reason why many of the studies are poorly written and have methodological limitations is that many are done by clinicians in 2nd world countries. Not one large DBRCT from the west has reported on IVM for Covid yet. Let that sink in.

If you don't like ivmmeta.com, have a look at this published meta analysis of ivermectin for covid. It reaches the same conclusions. And yes, there is also a cochrane meta analysis that cuts out all by 9 DBRCTs (ha!), still is positive, but not stat-sig.

https://journals.lww.com/americantherapeutics/fulltext/2021/...

Way to go mods with the censorship, hiding these comments. History will not be on your side.

This is kind of arguing in circles, though. A big part of the reason media is so hard on Trump is that he is classless and they were embarrassed he was their president. It's not like his public image was any better in 1990 well before he ever openly declared political ambitions and decided he was a Republican. He'd been a sideshow clown for decades. Arguably, the ridiculous level of polarization we already had is the only reason he got to where he is. Even most Republicans were embarrassed of him until he won the nomination and they rallied to the only option left that wasn't a Democrat. But thanks to having way too many candidates in the primary, he didn't need the support of "most" Republicans. He just needed more than Ted Cruz and Jeb Bush.

As someone who considers themselves an outside onlooker, I disagree. Trump allowed all of the tribal people to out themselves. It's made it a lot easier to find people who stick to their principles and praised/criticized him where appropriate.

You just described one of the many problems with the media and then blamed it on Donald Trump. Why couldn't you have said "One of the problems with the media is..."

I don't recall that happening. Can you give examples? That sounds like Trump's behavior, not others.

   One of the worst things about Donald Trump was that if he or anyone adjacent to him actually said anything good, it immediately became toxic.

That wasn't the worst thing about trump.... it's the worst thing about the media coverage of him. You're blaming him for how media covered him.

Why not both? Trump behaved in a provocative way for a reason - it's not like he was a poor misunderstood thing and the media picked up on him for no reason.

Preface by saying the I don't agree with Trump on a lot of things.

Lets look at this from a parenting perspective. If i have a child who misbehaves often, is it appropriate for me to punish them when they do something good?

Holding the media to the same accountability, if Trump is saying stupid/outrageous/provocative things, then lambast him when he says those things. But if the media lambasts him when he is saying something reasonable, then that is on the media.

I think most of the annoyance I see in the thread is because there was blame being assigned to Trump or even someone on the same stage as him because they were on that stage with him.

>One of the worst things about Donald Trump was that if he or anyone adjacent to him actually said anything good, it immediately became toxic.

So rather than examining an idea based on the merits, ideas were discarded due to the messenger or the who the messenger associated with.

Yes, I fully agree: criticizing Trump when when he was saying/doing something that makes sense just because it's Trump was very stupid.

Modified for context, the german adage holds. If you have Trump and 3 people talking at a table, you have 4 Trumpers talking at a table.

What about things said by them directly, their Twitter, etc?

70M people would like a word with you.

Don't confuse legacy media propaganda with what regular people think. Especially when you hear newspeak.

And 230M people would like a word with you.

Trumpists seem to forget that neither their movement nor their President have ever had the support of the American majority, much less of all "regular people." Never even the popular vote.

>Trumpists seem to forget that neither their movement nor their President have ever had the support of the American majority, much less of all "regular people." Never even the popular vote.

Neither did Hillary, who won 48% of the popular vote in 2016 to Trump's 46%. Does the fact that not until 2020 did Trump's opponent win a majority of the popular vote invalidate the validity of the opposition until then?