The major issue with Trump is that his dirty laundry is public. There's very little to leak, even back then.
Holding political office gives you a lot of rope to hang yourself, because every day you make difficult decisions.
That fancy dinner that someone paid for as a sign of good faith, was that a bribe for a decision you had already made or was it completely innocent? Does it matter if it's a news outlet, what about a diamond miner? What about Google?
But a business person not paying taxes, or a bigot misogynist saying something obscene about women? That's expected.
The major issue is that if a whistleblower takes side, its no longer whistleblowing but espionage. Maybe there was stuff that could have hurt Trump but wasn't released? His presidency wasn't a smooth sail and ended with a bang.
We wouldn't know because there's no ant-Trump whistleblower organisation.
>The major issue is that if a whistleblower takes side, its no longer whistleblowing but espionage
What? So if I'm an employee of the DNC, and I want to blow the whistle on what I see by leaking documents, I need to somehow get the corresponding RNC documents or else I'm a spy?
This viewpoint makes no sense. Maybe you're calling Wikileaks the whistleblower, but they really can't be considered one.
> What? So if I'm an employee of the DNC, and I want to blow the whistle on what I see by leaking documents, I need to somehow get the corresponding RNC documents or else I'm a spy?
No, that's not what the parent is saying. If (1) you have acquired documents on both the DNC and the RNC, (2) they are both damaging and (3) you choose to only leak the ones about the DNC... well then it's not as clear cut and ethical as leaking both troves.
1) I said that there's not much dirty laundry on Trump to leak and I explained why.
2) Even if there was, it doesn't mean you need to wait for leaks from both sides of a political spectrum to report on them
3) Even if point 2 was true: how would you reconcile one side having more leaks than the other side, or if one is unverified or hard to verify?
4) Even if you could reconcile point 3 somehow: people will still call you biased because the nature of the leaks might not be symmetrical.
How would you operate in such a world.
FWIW I have no real dog in that fight, I am not on one of the US sides, I'm mostly worried about my own politics in the UK and I'm worried that our journalism is not functioning properly, and part of the reason is because the UK is following tact of the US and poisoning public opinion and treating journalists as inhuman meat to be derided publicly and discarded when public support wanes enough.
Holding political office gives you a lot of rope to hang yourself, because every day you make difficult decisions.
That fancy dinner that someone paid for as a sign of good faith, was that a bribe for a decision you had already made or was it completely innocent? Does it matter if it's a news outlet, what about a diamond miner? What about Google?
But a business person not paying taxes, or a bigot misogynist saying something obscene about women? That's expected.