The more interesting question is to consider why Trump would hold this view, especially if you disagree with him on other things. Perhaps you don’t have the same assumptions about the reasons why as he does.
We also know that an FBI attorney falsified information to get warrants against his campaign advisor.
We know that the FBI urged the media to actually censor negative news about his political opponents.
It would be difficult to them trust such an organization to them perform fair investigations against you after those occurrences, regardless of one's political party.
According to who? Trump?
Investigating leads is conspiring against you?
I don’t know the veracity of the claim that the FBI told the media to censor negative news. The media was definitely on guard for being manipulated following the DNC/Podesta email hacking and use of media by Russia in 2016. And so were our counterintelligence agencies. It’s literally their job.
Not focused either way on Trump, just thought that there actually was something to the GPs post.
Edit: Wasn't it Zuckerberg himself that said the FBI reached out to him about limiting the visibility of certain news?
No. The FBI reached out to Facebook to let them know how Russia tended to try to influence US citizens with fake news or by amplifying fake aspects of real news using social networks, including Facebook.
A lot of folks thought this was bad because it led to Facebook not amplifying (not removing, not blocking, just not promoting) the Hunter Biden laptop claims, because the story met the hallmarks of what the FBI pointed out to the team. It still does.
Out of curiosity (honestly), how does it?
“The media's treatment of the dubious laptop story when the NY Post first published it in 2020 was actually 100% correct and there is zero basis to re-examine that conclusion. First much of the alleged story wasn't even news, as a significant amount of what the laptop purportedly contained was about business dealings that were publicly known about for years to the extent that they had been investigated by a GOP controlled Senate committee that cleared Biden of any corruption allegations. Second, it looked exactly like another Russian influence operation that should be treated cautiously and it looks the same way today. I was actually encouraged by the notion that the media may have learned something from 2016 as evidenced by the caution demonstrated in their reporting and treatment of the story, especially with Rudy refusing to allow journalists he wanted to write about it access to authenticate the materials.
Even if we assume the crazy sounding laptop repair shop story were 100% true, we had partisan political operatives shopping a story to journalists about the supposedly scandalous revelations cribbed from the contents of someone's stolen email communications and electronic data in the midst of a presidential election campaign homestretch. The fact that some of the information has since been authenticated by the nYT or WaPO as belonging to Hunter Biden doesn't change anything. The Clinton emails that were dumped by Wikileaks in 2016 were also authentic. Didn't make them any less stolen or render their release combined with the gross misrepresentation of their contents to feed unsupported narratives less problematic, nor did their authenticity make it any less a part of a Russian influence operation.”
> In spring 2017, Mr. Page, denying he was a Russian agent, told reporters that he had provided information to the C.I.A. about Russia. An F.B.I. agent who was preparing to sign a factual affidavit to accompany the fourth wiretap application asked Mr. Clinesmith to obtain clarity about whether the C.I.A. considered Mr. Page a “source.” That led to Mr. Clinesmith’s interactions with a C.I.A. counterpart, who sent back an email referring to Mr. Page’s status as an American citizen and citing the memorandum from August as a place to find more information. Based on that exchange, Mr. Clinesmith told the agent that the C.I.A. had explicitly said Mr. Page was “never a source,” something his C.I.A. contact later denied saying. When the agent wanted to see it in writing, Mr. Clinesmith inserted the words “and not a ‘source’” into the email before showing it to his colleague. The agent was satisfied and signed the wiretap affidavit without adding any disclosure about Mr. Page’s relationship with the C.I.A.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/19/us/politics/kevin-clinesm...
The problem is that partisanship and racism made it OK to investigate left-wing and black leaders on spurious grounds. However, eventually a right-wing leader managed to ignore the law blatantly and importantly enough to be investigated : and at that point the right turned against the FBI.
There's no principle, only partisanship. Kind of a disaster for the rule of law.
But hey, let’s cross that bridge when we get there.
I’d have a lot less of a problem with some of these federal agencies if they’d prosecute the criminals in their own ranks.
I think my slide into cynicism regarding humans who achieve power, regardless of their stated political philosophies and alignments, started after finishing "The Dictator's Handbook". I read here some posts advocating getting rid of this or that, or saying we should do it "this way", but even though I agree in a wishful kind of way, it's just not how human beings are wired... No matter how virtuous a system may be, it seems to take only the inevitable one or two odd instances of corruption to start the rot that will bring it down.
This seems to be based on the premise that there could ever be a system that was somehow perfectly free or corruption to begin with.
I think that’s far fetched. I think all human systems are messy and are going to contain some instances of corruption.
The question is simply whether the level of corruption reaches the level that cancels out the benefits of the system as a whole, or not.
I like to think of it as wishful thinking. I fantasize about winning the lottery, too.
>> The question is simply whether the level of corruption reaches the level...
Yeah, agreed. I couldn't point to a single instance where an attempt to eliminate corruption did not eventually spawn unintended (bad) consequences. Working to manage it seems to be the best alternative.
Yeah - I tend to agree.
The major trend in these comments is the FBI and the government were bad, and are still bad, and the only solution is to dismantle them, but these commenters are too late. Where were these revolutionaries in 1968? Hoover died in 1972 and so did his fascist policies.
But you nailed it. While the Civil Rights Movement was in full swing, institutional racism in executive agencies was still the rule rather than the exception.
I think it is interesting how that contrasts with minority member success stories in entertainment. In this[1] rehearsal take for a track on Franklin's debut album, we can hear fascinating avant garden social hieracrchy.
Remember that in 1960, even though first developed in the 1940's, multitracking was cutting-edge technology, and multitrack decks were still rare. The modern recording process of scratch track replacement and instrument isolation and separation hadn't yet been developed. Music performances were recorded live in the studio with all the musicians performing in the same tracking room, playing simultaneously together with or without being physically separated by gobos ("go betweens"). Franklin sits at a piano, playing and singing simultaneously, with her own single microphone, and the Ray Bryant Combo itself probably only had one microphone, with both ultimately mixed down to mono. There is no monitoring for the artists, no headphone mixes, and everyone still has to be able to hear everyone else, and Franklin has to play and sing above the accompaniment to be able to hear herself. Hammond speaks from the control room over a PA in the tracking room in deference to Franklin.
But what it is abundantly clear is that, judiciously but humbly so, Franklin is in charge. Columbia Records and producer John Hammond put a young 18yo black woman in charge of a band's and her own studio performances in late 1960," while 8 years later the government is still notably racist and paranoid.
In any regard, while institutional racism still exists in government, it is a shadow of its former ubiquity, except perhaps in unsophisticated rural sheriffs departments. In comparison of then to today, the FBI is now one of the more enlightened agencies, even with only about 20% of its agents minority members. Institutional racism remains, but it has become the exception, and racist policy and language and acts are held to scrutiny; participants are held accountable and extirpated from the ranks.
"What do you mean to be specific?"
You are asking a question especially when you already know the answer. Even when he said he wants it defunded, what is your point? In fact, is it this instead?:
'Anyone who agrees with him is a trump supporter'
I do not care if Trump, Biden, Jan 6 rioters, BLM rioters, Antifa, or anyone says that. The point is, that it is quite clear that the FBI doesn't care and is on no-one's side.
If I said that, you’d be able to point to where I said it, rather than lying by pretending to quote me but in fact writing something of your own that I didn’t say.
If you want to argue with someone who holds that view, you need to look elsewhere.
If you have a question about what I actually said, feel free to ask it.
I did not say 'you said that'. I said: "What is your point? In fact, is it this instead?"
So if that isn't your point, then I'll ask you again before you dodge my question, with an even clearer one for you:
Even when Trump did say "Defund the FBI", What is your point then? Especially when you already knew the answer before asking it?
You are now asking what my point is, which shows that you don’t actually know, so you were obviously stating a falsehood when you claimed to know as a ’fact’ what my point was.
> Especially when you already knew the answer before asking it?
Believing you can read other people’s minds is a symptom of psychosis.
Did you even make a point in the first place with your original question? Or are you still knowingly dodging mine? I made myself perfectly clear in the second reply to you, and yet you're still unable to directly answer a basic and simple question.
> Believing you can read other people’s minds is a symptom of psychosis.
You choosing to dodge, leads me to think you weren't even making a point in the first place. If you believe you had a point to make, then I'll ask again:
Given that it is true that Mr Trump said "Defund the FBI", What is your point then? What point are you making on your question in the first place?
There are many interesting possible answers to the question. You are welcome to offer one, or as I have already said ask a clarifying question if you don’t understand.
From the guidelines:
“Please don't use Hacker News for political or ideological battle. It tramples curiosity.”
I suggest that you might want to stop looking for political ‘points’ to argue against, and consider just having an open discussion.
Except that I directly answered your question, rather than avoiding it or dodging them which is what you are still actively and currently doing with my question:
'Given that it is true that Mr Trump said "Defund the FBI", What is your point then? What point are you making on your question in the first place?'
What part of this question don't you understand if my first seemingly 'complicated' question "What is your point on this?" was very difficult for you to answer?
> There are many interesting possible answers to the question. You are welcome to offer one, or as I have already said ask a clarifying question if you don’t understand.
You: "Isn’t this the view of former president Trump?"
Me (Second reply): "Even when he said he wants it defunded, what is your point?"
Me (Second reply): I do not care if Trump, Biden, Jan 6 rioters, BLM rioters, Antifa, or anyone says that. The point is, that it is quite clear that the FBI doesn't care and is on no-one's side.
I have already answered it. Everything else is you dodging my question and your inability to even directly answer it.
> “Please don't use Hacker News for political or ideological battle. It tramples curiosity.”
So assuming you took the time to read the guidelines, surely your question wasn't flame-baiting, or was it since you still don't have a point for asking your question?
"Eschew flamebait. Avoid unrelated controversies, generic tangents, and internet tropes."
> I suggest that you might want to stop looking for political ‘points’ to argue against, and consider just having an open discussion.
That starts by answering basic questions, like I did. Rather than dodging them like what you are doing, which isn't good in a discussion. I already told you what I think. Now you can begin by giving a direct answer to my basic question to continue this "open discussion".
What basic question do you claim I didn’t answer? Try asking it in once sentence.
He is probably the only person who might actually get to enact this policy, whereas nobody in the current administration is even talking about it.
How could it be more relevant?
I similary don't care about what the president in 2029 thinks.
Anyway, I have the compulsive need to explain it.
I'm not speculating about what an ex-president would do because he's not the president, and might not ever be. There's a good chance that speculating about it is a waste of time. It's definitely a waste of time now, because the earliest he'd become president again is 3 years from now.
The FBI exists. It continues to exist. I don't think it should based on a myriad of past actions. I can write letters to congresspeople and the president about the FBI, and they're people in power now that I don't need to speculate about.
So we have the intangible, and the tangible.
My point is that Trump may not be president now, but it seems you see that as a binary viewpoint.
He is currently head of a large political organization that pre-dates the FBI which made him president once and may do so again.
He hasn’t stopped existing, nor has the organization that supports him any more than the FBI has.
So I simply disagree that one is tangible and the other is not.