Donald Trump recently sued the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) for €10 billion for "splicing together two distinct parts of his speech to make it seem defamatory or inciting".
Trump, in the Jan 6 Capital Riot event, said "fight like hell" and used such terms throughout his speech. Democrat lawyers, post this event, were champing at the bit to begin the litigation process of suing Trump for hate speech and for inciting violence.
However, senior lawyers clarified that "incitement" requires mens rea and the proof of causation beyond a reasonable doubt which could not be established in such a case, as Trump, very carefully, said "fight like hell... but don't resort to violence" in his speech, indicating a different form of fight, distinct to physical ones.
Now that the BBC has once again termed Trump's speech as defamatory and inciting, the same establishment standards for "actual malice" (vide NYT v. Sullivan) are yet to apply.
This, in debates, is termed as the fallacy of X.
The fallacy of X refers to splicing together or splitting apart two sections of speech to strawman the argument, ie, make it easier to misrepresent or attack. It could also refer to the biased selection of some parts of the speech to achieve the same motive.
The name X comes from the ancient practise of being extremely selective while picking a certain stone fruit of the Prunus genus (now used today as vulgar slang).
What is this fallacy?
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