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> Snopes rates the claim that Senator Joe Biden said "we have put together I think the most extensive and inclusive voter fraud organization in the history of A

• torstenvl 5y ago
  A mistaken and false admission is still an admission. And he did make such an admission. I believe, and I suspect most reasonable people would believe, that this was a gaffe and that the President did not mean what he said. It is an admission that should be given very little weight. But it remains an admission nonetheless, and it is a lie for Snopes to claim otherwise.
  • jodrellblank 5y ago
    "admit, intransitive verb: To grant to be real, valid, or true; acknowledge or concede. To disclose or confess (guilt or an error, for example). synonym: acknowledge." It can't be both an admission of something real, and a gaffe. If he said "I am a dog" it would be a lie, not an admission that he's a dog (because he simply isn't). Describing an anti-fraud organisation as a fraud organisation is either correct and an admission of a coverup, or false and a mistake and not an admission of anything.
    • torstenvl 5y ago
      No. A statement can relate to truth-or-falsity independent of its own truth or falsity. Example: You falsely accuse me of robbing a bank. I admit I robbed the bank, due to a threat against my family. Later, my defense counsel discovers evidence of the threat. The admission is still an admission. It grants that the accusation is true, even though it isn't. The evidence pertaining to why the admission is false is also fair game to explain why not to give any weight to the admission, but it nonetheless remains an admission. Same here. The public discourse should absolutely correct the record and establish what the President meant. He should probably issue a clarifying statement. But it doesn't change the fact that he made a statement that, by its own words if not by its probable intent, conceded the truth of an accusation.
    • LorenPechtel 5y ago
      I wouldn't even call it a gaffe, merely poorly worded. An X organization can be an organization to accomplish X, or it can be an organization to combat the problem of X. A reasonable person will look at whether X is generally considered positive or negative to decide between these, but a quote-miner won't care.
  • 8note 5y ago
    Its an admission to having an organization focussed on voter fraud. It's not an admission that that organization promotes or organizes voting fraudulently You're ascribing more precision to the statement than is there
    • torstenvl 5y ago
      I'm ascribing no precision to it whatsoever. You're putting the cart before the horse. Before you can argue about what a piece of evidence means, it first has to be evidence. An admission is a type of evidence, given by an individual against their own interest. The fact that there are all kinds of arguments about this evidence not meaning what it is claimed to mean - arguments I wholeheartedly agree with - does not change the fact that it is a statement Joe Biden made that is negative for Joe Biden. This particular admission is extremely weak, clearly ambiguous, and frankly demonstrates that his opponents are grasping at straws. But there's still no getting around the very basic fact that it is an admission.
  • soneil 5y ago
    Surely this is like claiming the Fire Dept are obviously arsonists, otherwise it would have been named the Extinguishing Dept? Or that the 9/11 Commission obviously commissioned 9/11. We have a "Serious Organised Crime Agency" which is more akin to the FBI than the Mafia. What you're describing as a gaffe is a very intentional misrepresentation.
    • deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]