The Outrageous False Equivalences That Prop Up President Trump

[dalton99a]

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/11/24/opinion/trump-false-equivalence.html

https://archive.ph/UHKN8

The Outrageous False Equivalences That Prop Up President Trump
Nov. 24, 2025
By Frank Bruni

While President Trump certainly has supporters who adore him and feel no need to justify that, he survives — and too often prospers — with the crucial help of voters who basically regard him as the lesser of evils.

They tell themselves something like this: Trump has shortcomings, but those are merely mirrors of the corruption and craziness on the other side. Almost any accusation leveled at him is lodged as easily — and often more righteously — against his opponents. In a government of bad apples, he’s no mealier than the rest.

But those claims insist on a symmetry that doesn’t exist. They’re equivalences not merely false but fantastical. They ignore the severity, the prevalence, the consequences of the misconduct in question. Imagine defending a suitor who’s a serial arsonist because the other guy has a jaywalking citation; both bachelors are lawbreakers, after all. That’s the perverse moral arithmetic of more than a few Trump apologists.

I find two of their rationalizations especially preposterous, starting with this:

...

[The Roux Comes First]

1. Of Course the Primary Media Outlets, Including NYT, WP, and WSJ Are Rife with This Sort of Crap,

Sane-washing obvious dementia and nauseating narcissism from the would-be dictator-king and desperately elevating relatively trivial blems on blue-leaning politicians to be equivalent to absurdly overwrought kirk deification and violence-mongering from the grounds of the former Rose Garden.

[maxsolomon]

5. There is an inherent weakness to the form of "journalistic objectivity".

"Straight reporting" is not supposed to take sides - that's for opinion (like Bruni). Trump thrives on that.

[Just_Vote_Dem]

2. Yes, that's bothsiderism

And it leads to an apathetic society that gives up on voting because they think, "They're all crooks!!!"

[ToxMarz]

3. Yes, bothsiderism is probably one of the most sinister and effective

political scams they ever devised, and it was an easy sell to MSM and the public because of our reverence for 'common sense wisdom' over intellectual fact based and nuanced information. It is just a sinister deflection to whataboutism.

[Mister Ed]

4. K&R. The op-ed at the links is well worth a read. n/t

[NNadir]

6. This is in the NY Times? The paper that normalized the freak?

Spare me the "concern."

Stick to the Maggie Haberman fan girl shit.

It's more honest.

[niyad]

7. He did a great job dumping on President Biden for Hunter's actions,

including neglecting to mention where the attacks on the "morally, ethically failed Hunter" originated and were breathlessly, endlessly, covered, including by the nyt, and not mentioining krasnov's spawn.

[JT45242]

8. They didn't want the uppity black woman or the educated white woman

It was racism and sexism.

My their definition any man, however evil, is the lesser evil compared toletting a woman have power.

And how dare another well educated black person even dare to run against the savior of white rage.

That is what they voted on even if they won't say it out loud.

[FakeNoose]

9. It's just another version of "both-siderism" and I say that's all crap

[BaronChocula]

10. It's not even that

Imagine defending a suitor who’s a serial arsonist because the other guy has a jaywalking citation...

In this case, "the other guy" doesn't even have a jaywalking citation. The cult defending the serial arsonist just says "the other guy" is a bigger serial arsonist" when they've done nothing wrong at all.

And that defense isn't restricted to the cult. It's also used by the large swath of electorally unsophisticated voters who cover for their ignorance of politics with the dismissive assertion that "they're all the same." But if you asked them for an example they'd go mute.

[Quanto Magnus]

11. Biden touching someone's arm or back

Trump bragging about grabbing women by the p@#$%

equivalent in their book....????

I still see post by people that should really be able to see the difference....