The mainstream press failed to accurately describe the hand gesture that Elon Musk made twice at Trump’s Inauguration Day rally, setting a troubling precedent for the second Trump era.
It is a fun activity to think of legal standards here. Of course we don’t know what he was thinking for sure, and we never will, just like everyone else in the world every day of our lives. But we can and do judge people by their actions… In other words, where do people want to put this Nazi salute? What is their certainty about his action? Below are the legal standards.
- Reasonable suspicion
- Probable cause
- Preponderance of evidence (more likely than not)
- Clear and convincing
- Proof beyond a reasonable doubt
Where would you rank the Nazi salute conclusion? I think proof beyond reasonable doubt, and perhaps we could reasonably debate claims that it’s a level or two weaker than that. But the deniers, they want to say there’s not even reasonable suspicion, and that is a sad joke.
If it was something that came out of the blue, I might be more inclined to give the benefit of the doubt, but the man follows, regularly retweets and converses with actual (as in, they call themselves that) Nazis on Twitter.
It just shows that the mainstream media (and the ADL) aren’t really interested in the truth.