Governments, politicians, business leaders, etc. regularly say things out loud to generate a desired perception among the public, when the real underlying reaso

Governments, politicians, business leaders, etc. regularly say things out loud to generate a desired perception among the public, when the real underlying reasons are actually different. This is not rare or exceptional — it's the norm. It's called PR. Every public statement is crafted this way. Thus, every statement by an official should be looked at with a critical eye, and we the public should be analyzing the pieces on the board and the incentives at play to try to deduce the truth for ourselves. Again, this is not rare or exceptional — it's the norm, especially on Hacker News. I'm not sure what you find so insane about this. What's insane is just believing everything at face value with no understanding of the reasoning behind it. If Yahoo announced a partnership with Facebook and talked about how great a guy Zuckerberg was, would you expect everyone on HN to roll over and say, "It must be true"? Doubtful. "Trump helped," is not a convincing statement alone. It doesn't imply anything more than, "Trump told us to say he helped." Rather, pointing to specific differences, concessions, deals, etc. that Trump made vs his predecessors would be convincing.