Leach’s post is a classic example of logical fallacies at
their best. His piece is littered with ad hominem attacks. He calls Trump the “New
York liberal” and “Prima Donald,” and at one point refers to “Donald Trump and
the party formerly known as Republican.”
All these attacks on Donald and the party certainly play well with loyal
Leach readers, but these name-calling, character digs only cheapen and weaken his
argument.
Leach also employs the straw man fallacy in his piece by
dramatically oversimplifying the situation.
Leach claims that Trump plans “to destroy the right to bear arms.” He also
discusses the bipartisan meeting Trump held on gun control but notably puts “bipartisan”
in quotation marks to indicate there was nothing bipartisan about it. He claims that during that meeting, noted
democrat Dianne Feinstein was sitting so close to Trump that “she was
practically [in] (sic) his lap.” While
this overblown rhetoric may feed into the fury of Leach’s fans, it’s Debate 101’s
example of what not to do in an argument.
And finally, Leach’s credentials themselves call into
question his authority to speak on the subject.
I was unable to locate ANY biographical information on him other than the
information that was listed at the bottom of the blog post which claims that
Leach is the owner of “The Strident Conservative” which appears to be an
online conservative website and radio show/podcast. I was unable to even locate an “About” page
which discusses the site’s development or Leach's credentials as a
conservative commentator. There is also
no Wikipedia page on David Leach, further calling into question his reliability.
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