On this day Trump had fired attorney general Sally Yates because she had defied him on the travel ban. " WASHINGTON — President Trump fired his acting attorney general on Monday night, removing her as the nation’s top law enforcement officer after she defiantly refused to defend his executive order closing the nation’s borders to refugees and people from predominantly Muslim countries."
Today I will be going over the Sally Yates testimony and how the conservative side of the media had used fallacies within their arguments and claims to persuade their readers to come to pre made conclusion.
What I had noticed in the Fox news article “Former acting AG Sally Yates testifies on Russia”, Is that the straw man fallacy has been put to work in their claims and arguments that are made. I had noticed that they had cut down Yates answers and rebuttals to the questions that she was being asked. They had made it look as if she did not put less effort into the testimony that what she actually did. This is a common occurrence within the article and happens quite often as the majority of the time Fox news had only put down only line answers from Yates when it was much more than that. For example, the Fox news article quoted Yates “I did my job the best way I knew how”, that’s all they quoted Yates on without much context other than being asked why she had done to the travel ban. They undermine her answers that are given. The way that this fallacy is used is actually quite convincing as I have seen the videos of the Yates testimony and it made it seem lackluster and not up to par with the real answers that Sally Yates gave. When I fact checked the article it was all true due to the fact of it being all quotes from the testimony. Yate's actually quote. " I understand that. But all I can say is that I did my job the best way I knew how. I looked at this E.O., I looked at the law, I talked with the folks at the Department of Justice, gathered them all to get their views and their input and I did my job."
Another conservative news source Breitbart in “FNC’s Hume: Sally Yates’ Testimony ‘Didn’t Really Move the Ball Very Much” had many of the same aspect as the Fox news article due to the fact that they used the straw man fallacy and went after Sally Yates. On the other hand, one thing stood out to me in this article and that was that they had used ad hominem, attacking her person rather than the answers she was giving. They had said “So, it didn’t really move the ball very much. Embarrassing”, they had said this in the context that Yates had not disclosed much about the Flynn case and that it was classified information. Rather than acknowledging that Breitbart called it embarrassing that not much has been revealed and disclosed about the case. Breitbart had also used the strawman fallacy in their article about Yates. They gave no other quotes on Yates testimony and only concluded that it was embarrassing for her to not be able to disclose an information. They had only implemented parts that they had wanted. They had used this fallacy of only showing a small part of her testimony to show their readers that not much had happened during the testimony. They had not mentioned anything about the Russian investigation nor any of Yates words defending herself of her actions against the travel ban. This was really interesting to me because there was so much more context and so much more going on in this testimony but Breitbart chose to stay on only one particular aspect of it and only take a single quote from her testimony regarding the Russian investigation, the travel ban, and Michael Flynn. Coming from a reader’s perspective it was very convincing that the testimony came down to nothing being done or revealed when a lot was said about her actions defending what she had done to the travel ban. " And Senator, my answer to that question would require me to reveal classified information. And so, I — I can't answer that."
What I find most interesting in these both articles is that one article does cover the whole testimony but only the way they want to. By undermining the answers from Yates, they only inquired the quotes that they could have taken advantage as which was really compelling to me. On the other hand, with the Breitbart article they had no mention of anything else other than it was not really progressive. That not much had gotten done throughout the testimony. When in reality there was so much more to it. Breitbart had not a single mention of the Russian investigation and chose to pick at a single quote from yates which an example of the straw man fallacy. In the end both of these articles had used straw man fallacies and ad hominem to get their information across. It would be convincing if there was no other research done on this material
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