I have recently talked to a Chinese friend of mine who started talking about how smart Trump is etc. She previously only gained her knowledge through the Chinese media and not the “western propaganda”, so it was her first exposure to the non-CCP-controlled stuff. I told her “you sound like you read FOX news”. She replied with “hahah yes, how did you know?”
This made me realize that she is very prone to getting manipulated and not doing any fact-checking. However, this situation made me reflect on my own news-sourcing skills.
How do you deal with the issue and what can I do step-by-step to verify the news that I read myself and at the same time a way that I can recommend to my Chinese friend so that she doesn’t fall for the most obvious tricks so easily?
Seriously though, does anyone know if Trump is smart or not? Anyone knows his grades when he was younger for example? Did he ever take an IQ test? What does it even mean to be smart? How do you even prove this statement?
I can quote that Chinese friend of mine:
“You know because recently I watched some news about Harris and Trump. Harris is like, you know, some political right democrat: we should respect the LGBT people or some lots of lots of stupid things, but I see the increasing prices and lots of people, they don’t have their jobs, so lots of lots of Americans - they support Trump now.”
“You know, I think maybe Trump is the better choice for American people. If I were American, I would say “OK, Trump”, you know. I think the American people are not stupid. They don’t want to have low paid jobs and pay lots of money for some illegal immigrants, and some stupid, stupid robberies, you know. But they just wanna increase their salaries and have a good living environment. Of course, if I were American, I would support Trump too.”