[Pete F.]

Originally Posted by detbuch

Fiona Hill, The Brookings Institution, and Politico slant left and their opinions do also. Her article was correctly labeled, above its title, as "opinion." Opinion is not fact. Whatever "facts" she mentioned in her article had to be made to look like things that could lead up to a coup. There were no facts that showed what happened was actually a coup.

As I said, it was a slick job of compiling a bunch of things said and done by Trump into a narrative of circumstantial evidence that could possibly (in her opinion--certainly) claim that what happened was a coup. And, as I said, building a case around circumstantial evidence requires more rigor than was applied in her article. I gave sufficient examples of how her equivalencies to a coup were not solid, even deceitful, and if not that then stupid or ignorant. Everything she claims that Trump did was coup-like can well be considered otherwise--especially in his motivation. It is a very flawed essay composed of weak circumstantial evidence which can easily be interpreted in other ways. And the notion that he was planning this coup almost from the beginning of his term is too fanciful, far-fetched, and too elaborately constructed to accept without far more solid and actual proof/evidence that it was definitely a coup rather than merely presenting a patchwork of disparate facts, put together in a way that, not very convincingly if properly examined, somehow resemble what a coup would look like in the "old days".

I stand by what I wrote. If you want to pick it apart, have a go. But don't try to impress me with her credentials as if that were enough to verify her opinion. All people with "credentials" don't fall into lockstep agreement. No doubt people with just as impressive, or more so, credentials disagree with her.

I don't get cowed by credentials. I have "credentials" on how to determine if an argument is valid and strongly presented. I examine and critique what is said. That's what I did. Argue with that, don't throw her credentials at me as if that nullifies what I wrote.

I'll stand by what I said also.

There are more facts in that article than I have seen to support Trump's claims of fraud in the election, where there are none.