Was the 2020 Election Stolen? Or, How NOT to Make a Political Argument

My goal is to be a good thinker and to be able to make good arguments to support my beliefs. Every day I try to learn more about how to be a good thinker. On October 17, 2022 I saw an interview that features a really BAD argument for what someone believes. Let's analyze this terrible argument and see if we can learn how NOT to defend our beliefs.

In this video Dana Bash is interviewing Kari Lake. Dana Bash works for CNN. Kari Lake was a Phoenix news anchor for 22 years and is now running on the Republican ticket for Arizona governor. This clip last for 4 minutes and 15 seconds.

You can see the video here: Click here for the video

At the beginning of the interview Dana says that Kari has claimed the 2020 election was stolen and also says there is no evidence of these claims and that such claims have been debunked. Kari does not deny that she has claimed the 2020 election was stolen and she insists there is PLENTY of evidence. At this point we might expect Kari to present her evidence and persuade us the 2020 election was stolen.

Kari starts her argument by saying that 740,000 votes had no chain of evidence and should not have been counted. Dana asks for evidence of this but Kari does not have the evidence with her. She says she will send the evidence to Dana's staff…. All this happens in the first 30 seconds of the interview.

Now let's pause for a second here because this is an amazing thing for Kari to say. She makes a claim about 740,000 votes that, she says, should not have been counted. Dana asks her to back up this claim with evidence but Kari is unable to back up the claim. Apparently, Kari neglected to identify the source of evidence for her claim BEFORE the interview so she could point us to it IN the interview! Instead, she says that she will have to send the evidence to Dana's staff! That is incredible!

Kari obviously knew she was going to be interviewed on a national TV show. She must have known she would be asked about her claims that the 2020 election was stolen. And yet she came with a claim she could not back up on the spot. That seems like astoundingly incompetent preparation for an interview! One could be excused for wondering if she really FORGOT to bring her evidence or if, perhaps, she doesn't really have any evidence to bring....

On top of that, even if it is true that there are 740,000 votes with no chain of evidence, that would not prove the election was stolen. We would have to know what states these votes were cast in. We would have to know if these votes were Democratic or Republican or a mix of both. We would have to know what Kari means by "no chain of evidence." Is that her opinion or does she have some objective evidence of wrongdoing? Was there any evidence the votes were tampered with? Were any of these claims litigated in court and, if so, what was the result? Kari does not tell us anything except the claim that there are 740,000 votes that should not have been counted without backing that claim up in any way.

As I said, all this happens in the first 30 seconds. For the rest of the interview, another 3 minutes and 45 seconds Kari never even once tries to prove that the 2020 election was stolen, she just keeps trying to change the subject.

First, from 30 to 40 seconds, she says the media does not want to cover evidence that the election was stolen. This is laughably absurd since she is saying this on a media show where she was just asked to present her evidence so the media could cover it, and then failed to present her evidence. It is pretty disingenuous to sit in a media interview where you are asked to present evidence they can cover, fail to present any evidence for them to cover, and then accuse of them of not wanting to cover the evidence. So, that was kind of head-spinning.

After that from about 0:40 to 2:10 in the interview Kari shifts to the claim that people don't trust our elections. This may or may not be true but notice that Kari is now not even trying to defend her claim that the 2020 election was stolen, she has changed the subject to "people don't trust our elections" which is not at all the same as the claim that "the 2020 election was stolen." She talks about the 2000 election, the 2004 election, the 2016 election, the 2018 Georgia gubernatorial election, which are all interesting subjects, but none of those subjects have anything to do with whether or not the 2020 election was stolen.

Near the 2:10 mark Kari tries to change the subject yet again by claiming that she has a 1st Amendment right to question the government and that the media is cancelling people who question the government about the 2020 election. The 1st Amendment claim is one that nobody has denied as far as I know. Within very broad limits everybody in the United States has a right to say whatever they want. We agree on that. The second claim, that the media cancels people who question the 2020 election, is absurd given that she is LITERALLY making this claim during an interview about the 2020 election on a national TV show and has just been given an opportunity to present her evidence and has failed to do so.

From 2:10 to 3:40 Dana played clips of three leading officials from the Trump Administration, including the Attorney-General Bill Barr, all saying there was no evidence the 2020 election was stolen. Kari never addressed these statements at all but, instead, tried to change the subject again. This time she wants to talk about Maricopa County in 2022. Fascinating subject I'm sure, but doesn't have anything to do with whether or not the 2020 election was stolen.

At the end Kari says all she wants is "honesty, integrity, and transparency in our elections." But if that was all she wanted then everyone would agree with her and there would be no controversy. There is controversy because she has claimed the 2020 election was stolen. BUT, when she is on an interview on a national TV show and asked to present evidence the 2020 election was stolen she somehow... forgot to bring the evidence with her. And then she spends the next 3 minutes and 45 seconds trying to change the subject to anything in the world EXCEPT the 2020 election. If Kari, who spent 22 years as a news anchor, and is now running for governor of Arizona CANNOT make a case that the 2020 election was stolen when given an opportunity to do so, why should anyone believe the 2020 election was stolen?

I try to be a good thinker. As far as I can see in this interview Kari did not present any evidence that the 2020 election was stolen. In fact, she spent most of the interview trying to run away from questions about the 2020 election being stolen. Unless someone can do a better job than Kari did here, we should NOT believe that the 2020 election was stolen.

Right?

Finally, can we learn from this trainwreck of a presentation how NOT to make a political argument on national TV? How could we do better than Kari did in a situation like this? Here are some tips:

• First: bring your evidence! Don't say there is PLENTY evidence and then be unable to provide it when asked. Looks bad!
• Second: Don't keep trying to change the subject. If you want to prove something then PROVE it! You can't prove something by continually jumping to other subjects. Looks bad!
• Third: Don't say obviously false things. For example, don't say nobody wants to see evidence when the interviewer JUST asked you to share your evidence. Looks bad!

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Copyright © 2022 by Joseph Wayne Gadway