Trump's latest gaffe revealed the biggest problem with American politics

Donald Trump’s most recent gaffe on the campaign trail saw the former president get hit with ridicule and mockery after saying the phrase: "We've been waging an all-out war on American democracy” during a speech in Iowa on December 2nd. 

However, the context in which the former president was speaking lends a lot of credibility to the idea that he wasn’t making the claim some have insisted that he did. Here’s what the whole situation revealed about politics in  America today. 

Trump has had a number of awkward gaffes in recent months but the former president’s latest public mistake might have taken the cake for this year’s worst after seemingly admitting that he had been waging war on democracy in America. 

The former president was speaking to a riled-up crowd of his supporters in his typically Trumpian brand of firebrand politics, going off feverishly on the 'corrupt political class' that had ruined the country before he arrived on the political scene. 

“In 2016, you voted to stand up to those liars, looters, losers, crooks, and creeps,” the former president explained. “You elected an outsider as your president and it was about America first. We want to put our country first,” Trump added according to Snopes.

Trump noted that the corrupt political class in the country that he referred to as liars and looters hadn’t put the country first in a long time but said that he and his administration did, which is why he did so well in office. 

“That's why it was one of the great presidencies, they say,” Trump told the crowd about his time in office. “Even the opponents sometimes say he did very well, I have to say,” the former president added while speaking about himself in the third person. 

“'Take it back,' they scream. His people say 'Take it back.'” Trump continued, adding that “from that day on, our opponents, and we had a lot of opponents, but we've been waging an all-out war on American democracy." It was this sentence that set the internet ablaze. 

While there were many responses to Trump's remarks, an edited version of what he said was posted to the Twitter account of Midas Touch Senior Digital Editor Acyn Torabi garnered the most ridicule and responses from Trump-haters across the internet. 

The post from Acyn saw one user respond by writing: “Possibly the first time in his miserable existence that he told the truth.” Another posted a crude caricature of Trump trying to blow up the country’s democracy with dynamite. 

While the gaffe might seem like the most worrying admission of Trump’s culpability in trying to put an end to America’s democracy, the sensationalism surrounding the comment probably shouldn't have gotten the attention it did according to Snopes.

The fact-checking and misinformation debunking website, which has not been a friend of the former president, noted that the claim Trump admitted to waging all-out war against American democracy was patently false based on the context. 

“Did Trump actually say that? In Snopes' judgment, based both on what we actually hear on the audio track and on the context of his remark, he did not,'' wrote Snopes David Emery after listening to an unedited version of Trump’s remarks in Iowa. 

“We did not hear, nor does the context support the claim that he said, ‘waging all-out war on American democracy.’ It's clear that Trump was out to accuse his political opponents of waging war on democracy, not admitting to doing it himself.” Emery added. 

The context in this situation is key, so it's important to understand that immediately after making his remarks about waging all-out war on America, the former president said: “You look at what they've been doing, and becoming more and more extreme and repressive.”

“They have just waged an all-out war with each passing day,” he added, which provides a much different background for his comment. And it is in the response to Trump's words that lies the biggest issue with politics in America today, a problem that could be the true doom of the country’s democracy. 

Too many people are willing to jump on a mistake before understanding the context of it. Yes, Trump isn’t a good political actor and he should be called out for the problems he causes in the country, but attacking his recent comments is disingenuous and sets a dangerous precedent that gives Trump the ammunition he needs to convince his followers his enemies will do anything to paint him in a bad light.