Facebook widens ban on political ads as alarm rises over election

What will actually happen is that 10 people who do not share your political or societal views will flag that news item irrespective of its true or false status, and we're back to step one. That's why FB tried that "internal commissions of truth"-thingie (or whatever it's called), but obviously that cannot scale and, also obviously, they also have their own biases.

> Trump: "Excuse me, excuse me. They didn’t put themselves -- and you had some very bad people in that group, but you also had people that were very fine people, on both sides. You had people in that group. Excuse me, excuse me. I saw the same pictures as you did. You had people in that group that were there to protest the taking down of, to them, a very, very important statue and the renaming of a park from Robert E. Lee to another name."

> Reporter: "George Washington and Robert E. Lee are not the same."

> Trump: "George Washington was a slave owner. Was George Washington a slave owner? So will George Washington now lose his status? Are we going to take down -- excuse me, are we going to take down statues to George Washington? How about Thomas Jefferson? What do you think of Thomas Jefferson? You like him?"

> Reporter: "I do love Thomas Jefferson."

> Trump: "Okay, good. Are we going to take down the statue? Because he was a major slave owner. Now, are we going to take down his statue?

> "So you know what, it’s fine. You’re changing history. You’re changing culture. And you had people -- and I’m not talking about the neo-Nazis and the white nationalists -- because they should be condemned totally. But you had many people in that group other than neo-Nazis and white nationalists. Okay? And the press has treated them absolutely unfairly.

First, it’s crystal clear from the transcripts that he’s saying “I’m not talking about the neo-nazis and white nationalists — because they should be condemned totally.” Painting that as one of the “(a) or (b)” options is shamelessly deceitful.

So what does he mean? The city was renaming a park named after Robert E. Lee. Trump is making a totally reasonable point: not everyone protesting taking down a statute of Robert E. Lee is a white supremacist or a neo-nazi. And he’s point is actually prescient. The reporter says he loves Thomas Jefferson. Well, my high school is named after Thomas Jefferson, and just a few years later they’re trying to change the name of the school.

Is Trump wrong that there were people there who were just protesting the name change? Was literally everyone in that crowd a white supremacist or neo-nazi? Maybe but that would be odd. I grew up in Virginia. Lots of well meaning but maybe insensitive people lionize Robert E. Lee. Maybe they all stayed home that day. But it would be fair to guess they didn’t.

Regardless, whether or not those Robert E. Lee buffs were actually present has nothing to do with how to interpret Trump’s statement, because it’s unambiguous. Maybe his speculation was incorrect. So what? That doesn’t mean it’s fair to portray it as an “if not supportive of white nationalists” statement because it’s unambiguously not that.

If the headline was: “Trump incorrectly assumes that good people attended rally, but in reality everyone was a white supremacist” that would have been a good headline. Good commentary about how outdated it is to lionize Robert E. Lee. But instead the media went for an interpretation that was clearly not what Trump meant.

Those are the people that Trump was presumably referring to, given that he explicitly said he was not talking about white supremacists (whom he condemned totally in the exact same speech).