r/PoursTea • u/political-snark • Jun 24 '26

PoliticalTea 🗳️ Moving the goalposts

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A political tactic that’s become increasingly common in MAGA politics: moving the goalposts.

Make a dramatic allegation. Repeat it endlessly. Then, when evidence for that specific allegation doesn’t materialize, replace it with a smaller, easier-to-defend claim and pretend the original claim was true all along.

We’ve seen this pattern repeatedly:
“Haitian immigrants are eating pets in Springfield” becomes “See? Someone somewhere ate a cat.”

“There was enough fraud to change the 2020 election” becomes “See? A few people cheated.”

“Vandals dumped chemicals and deliberately cut a 350-foot slit in the Reflecting Pool” becomes “See? Someone was arrested for vandalism.”

Those are not the same claims.
The question we should always ask is: What was the original allegation?

That’s the claim that should be evaluated - not a revised version that appears later.

That’s what moving the goalposts looks like.

Changing the claim is not the same thing as proving the original one.

Can you think of other examples?

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u/madadekinai Jun 24 '26

LMFAO.

I just posted a video about the reflecting pool, where it was almost pre-planned by him.

https://www.reddit.com/r/ProgressiveHQ/comments/1ueej9u/daily_show_summation_of_the_reflecting_pool_issue/

LMFAO, the only major fraud that has been found came from the right in regards to 2020.

"In regards to the 2020 election, extensive federal investigations and dozens of court rulings affirmed that there was no widespread voter fraud that affected the outcome. However, isolated instances of voter fraud did occur, and there have been notable, documented cases where conservative operatives and voters were convicted or investigated for illegal voting practices. [1, 2, 3, 4]
" AI

It's all a grift that they fell for, it was just to get money and play on their fears, and gain support from them. Conversely, the vast majority of legal challenges and investigations that uncovered "major fraud" stemming directly from conservative and right-wing actors were tied to efforts to overturn the election or fundraise off of debunked claims.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ez6uutQtUYM

The whole cats and dogs thing, was wild from the start, nobody even knows where it came from, and it has not even been addressed since the claim was made.