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Divided We Stand

Divided We Stand
New book about the 2020 election.

Wednesday, March 8, 2023

Reagan, Trump, and Moral Equivalence

Forty years ago today, President Reagan gave the famous "Evil Empire" speech, in which he addressed the fallacy of "moral equivalence."

... I urge you to beware the temptation of pride—the temptation of blithely declaring yourselves above it all and label both sides equally at fault, to ignore the facts of history and the aggressive impulses of an evil empire, to simply call the arms race a giant misunderstanding and thereby remove yourself from the struggle between right and wrong and good and evil.
And on February 7 2017, Trump had this exchange with Bill O'Reilly:
O'REILLY: He is a killer though. Putin is a killer.
TRUMP: There are a lot of killers. Do you think our country is so innocent? Do you think our country is so innocent?
O'REILLY: I don't know of any government leaders that are killers in America.
TRUMP: Take a look at what we have done too. We've made a lot of mistakes. I've been against the war in Iraq from the beginning.
O'REILLY: Yes. Mistakes are different then --

A year ago, Gustaf Kilander wrote at The Independent:

Footage from 2019 has resurfaced of Volodymyr Zelensky looking less than optimistic as former President Donald Trump said he hoped the Ukrainian president would be able to work things out with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

On 25 September 2019, the then-US President Trump told Mr Zelensky at UN headquarters in New York City that “I really hope that you and President Putin can get together and solve your problem”.

The 18-minute media availability took place on the same day as the phone call between the two men from earlier that year was released, in which Mr Trump asked Mr Zelensky for a “favour” – to investigate then-Democratic presidential primary candidate Joe Biden and his family, specifically his son Hunter Biden.