> 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 American politics." as false,
Snopes rates the claim "In October 2020, Joe Biden admitted to perpetrating voter fraud." as false.
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.
"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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
What they debunked was a twitter post that claimed Biden admitted to voter fraud. They didn’t claim that he did not say that sentence. They even posted a full transcript. Did you actually read this before posting it?
While Snopes could take on the mantle of hyperliteralism, this would be a pretty paralyzing extension of scope. Would they need to fact-check articles that referenced a PD's "homicide divisions", clarifying that their charter is to investigate homicide instead of perpetrate it? Would they be able to countenance references to a supermarket without clarifying that Safeway has not invented a type of market that can fly and has X-ray vision?
There are undoubtedly people whose language skills are poor enough to think that "voter fraud organization" here means "organization to commit voter fraud" instead of "organization to combat voter fraud". I'm not a fan of Snopes at all, but I don't think it's unreasonable that they exclude the tiny segment of the population in need of remedial literacy classes from their target audience.
Can we agree to be adults here? It’s clear to any reasonable person what he meant.
It is bad faith arguments like the one you are making that has made political discourse so toxic in this country.
Speaking of fact checks, that’s literally not what the page you linked says. Instead, they are rating the claim that “In October 2020, Joe Biden admitted to perpetrating voter fraud.”
But you're absolutely wrong. As in my other comment, a "voter fraud organization" "perpetrates" voter fraud as much as a "breast cancer organization" "perpetrates" breast cancer.
This is the in-your-face, obvious, and common meaning of what he said. Why are you pretending otherwise?
It's so obvious to me that the quote means "an organization that combats voter fraud" that I honestly can't believe you're arguing in good faith. And I don't even like Biden.
If he had said instead "breast cancer organization", would you start claiming that he's trying to cause more breast cancer in the world? Obviously not, because that's absurd.
That's incredible mental gymnastics. This is like a straw man version of what leftists say the average fox news viewer is like. If this is parody, then congratulations on fooling me.
