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Originally Posted by CaramonLS
The article title is "Donald Trump falsely claims "millions of people who voted illegally' cost him the popular vote. Once the writer decided on that sort of title, they assumed authority over the validity of the claim and made their own assertion that the claim was indeed false.
A more truthful title would be "Donald Trump claims voter fraud: No evidence provided". Just because a claim is made doesn't automatically make it false with an absence of evidence.
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In general you can't prove a negative, so saying that a claim is false if there isn't positive evidence would be the reasonable position. If Trump had claimed something didn't happen and the reporter said the claim was false but didn't provide evidence it did happen then I'd definitely agree.
Other outlets have used wording more like you suggest in their reporting (CNN just happened to be the one Trump picked, I don't think it's because of the semantics used in the title), but Trump is still asking for proof that something didn't happen.
I think the media also has a responsibility to highlight when Trump lies or bases his opinions on made up facts like this. There's never been a president or maybe even politician who uses social media like this and had a following and impact like this. It's like state propaganda, it's not going to different when it's soldier's deaths or economic reports that he's tweeting about.
Quote:
Originally Posted by CaramonLS
Trump's tweet isn't "that" far out there either. It's probably not reality, but it definitely isn't aliens.
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It's close, how does an illegal immigrant go about registering to vote in the first place? On a scale of millions without anyone noticing, all of them risking deportation. It's pretty far along the scale of extraordinary in terms of extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.