Should off-the-cuff claims by Donald Trump be considered notable without evidence that people actually believe them?

Question

At the risk of offending EVERYONE of all political spectrums, should we really accept tweets by Trump as "notable" without explicit evidence that people actually believe them and don't just treat them as hyperbole?

Left-wingers don't believe anything he says on principle.

Right wingers explicitly told pollsters or surveyors that they don't necessarily take his statements at face value or factually (they treat them as hyperbole or even symbolic) and would vote for Trump regardless (citation: recent 538 podcast. They are not exactly friends of Trump so hard to claim partisan bias there).

So, if most people don't actually believe the claims, merely the fact that he has a wide audience seems to not add up to being notable by the definition Skeptics.SE uses (that people must believe the claim), e.g. we consider humorous or based-on-fictional-stories claims to be off-topic.

The question isn't really Trump-specific but Trump does seem like an extreme case where we KNOW he isn't necessarily widely believed despite wide audience.

Answer 1

I think you have a point there. There are a few possible issues with those questions:

• They uncritically assume that whatever Trump says is notable. What if Trump says that cows fly? Do we want to go there?

• They are often immediate, knee-jerk questions. We can't really verify the impact of those tweets instantly: do those claims "stick" at all? Do we really want to be the site that "responds" to whatever random claim a person decides to tweet?

There are often issues with the answers as well as often they merely repost content form other fact-checkers, which sometimes are just not very authoritative, and in any case simply reposting others' conclusions is not the kind of content we need.

On the other hands there are few caveats to what you say:

• Often Trump repeats claims that already exist (e.g. his birther claims). We need to verify whether a tweet from him is a novel claim or a rehash of an existing claim.

• Some claims may originate from his tweets and become notable over time. We shouldn't disallow such claims.

• Fact-checking is part of this site's topic, so I think we can discuss how to handle fact-checking but not disallow it based our perception that no one believes what Trump is saying.

• Your question seems to address the perception of Trump in the US, but the site is not limited to what North Americans believe. I see no reason not to assume that a hugely repeated claim by the President Elect won't be taken at face value by a bunch of people over the world.

In the light of these considerations, I propose we use the "single-source, on-going claim" rule here. Future questions will need have notability beyond a single tweet, in other words: if the claim is notable, people should actually make it theirs, not simply like or retweet Trump. For new claims, this means waiting a bit to see the impact; for old claims that Trump picks up on, this means go ahead, but give evidence of it.

As usual, we should give questions the benefit of the doubt, and not close automatically. Search first, and if there's no evidence of notability, VTC.

Answer 2

It is not reasonable to start with the assumption that statements by the 'leader of the free world' are not notable. Every nontrivial thing said by a person with that much power and influence is 'notable' unless proven otherwise. Note that 'notable' does not mean the same thing as 'credible' (and even then we have good evidence that nearly 62 million people take what he says seriously).

Even presidents do of course say unimportant things, and this is not to say "I had eggs for breakfast" needs to be fact-checked. Also some presidents make jokes, and we should not take seriously a claim that "Obama is a cartoon lion born in Africa". But our default assumption should be notability.

In terms of the number of people who take Trump's claims seriously - well, we have questions about moon landing hoaxes, and far more people take Trump's claims seriously than that.

For those of you as concerned about the current US political situation as I am, there is a good argument to be made that not taking Trump's claims seriously got us where we are today. A lot of news organizations said 'nobody takes what he says seriously', and so didn't spend much effort refuting them. On November 8th 2016 they were proven wrong. I personally know plenty of people who repeat Trump's claims as if they were fact. If you want to consider the "$4b Air Force One" claim as an example, I post 4 sites who took Trump seriously in the comments, and only comment length limits prevented me adding more. The stock market considered his comments notable enough that $1B was wiped off Boeing shares.

I'm sorry to have to tell you this, but we are now moving into a reality where everything this man says must be treated seriously. You may not like it, but that's the world we are now in.

If our aim is to shine the light of truth on unfounded claims, then there is no reason for us to stop doing it just because it's the President who says it.

Answer 3

I want to add a few things to @DJClayworth's answer.

We need to remember that there are people on this world who really beleave in a world wide conspiracy by alien Jewish lizard people that control the banking system through mind control and the Iluminati. Everything that a president of the United States, acting, elect or former says gets a lot of exposure, whether directly from their tweeter folowers, or from other media that cover them, weather in support or in opposition. I've been exposed to many of Trumps' tweets even though I don't have a tweeter account.

Also, the fuct that he's the presedent (elect) does gives his statements more credibility beause most people assume that the president have at least a small idea of what he's talking about and that he is supposed to understand the weight that his words have and would idealy avoid saying nonsence.

Of course that claims that are obviously jokes (like I'm Simba) or have no value (I ate eggs) should be disregarded, but anything else should be taken at face value and be assumed as credible.

[1] - This goes for all past, current and future U.S. presidents, not only for Trump.

[2] - This doesn't hold for tweets and remarks that were said before becoming the president (elect), and things that were said during his campeign should also take into concideration at what stage of the campeign he was when he said them, the words of the elected Republican presidential nominee have more weight that the words of a candedate.