A strawman argument means misrepresenting someone's viewpoint or argument to make it easier to attack or refute. It's like building a weak and easily knocked down "strawman" instead of addressing the real argument. Full definition
He paid no attention to my points, made strawman arguments based on putting words in my mouth that I had not said, made blatantly false claims about my climate analyses, failed to distinguish the different notions of climate sensitivity, and misrepresented Arrhenius, Let me illustrate with the following dozen -LRB-!) (judithcurry.com)
I find it highly entertaining, although depressing, that Intelligent Design folks try to discredit evolutionary theories with fanciful strawman arguments because they really don't know what they're against. (religion.blogs.cnn.com)
This site is not the place for rhetorical tricks like strawman arguments. (skepticalscience.com)