It’s Time To Call The President What He Is, A Liar

This President lies on a daily basis. It's time to start calling him what he is.

Once again, President Trump has been caught in yet another lie:

WASHINGTON — President Trump falsely accused The New York Times on Saturday of making up a source in an article about North Korea, even though the source was in fact a senior White House official speaking to a large group of reporters in the White House briefing room.

The president was referring to an article about the on-again, off-again summit meeting between Mr. Trump and Kim Jong-un, the leader of North Korea, which Mr. Trump had canceled Thursday.

The article, headlined, “Trump Says North Korea Summit May Be Rescheduled,” said that the United States was “back in touch with North Korea” and that the meeting might yet happen.

Mr. Trump posted on Twitter to denounce part of the article, which reported in the 10th paragraph that “a senior White House official told reporters that even if the meeting were reinstated, holding it on June 12 would be impossible, given the lack of time and the amount of planning needed.”

In a tweet, the president took issue with that sentence, saying, “WRONG AGAIN! Use real people, not phony sources.”

It is not clear whether the president was simply unaware of the actions of his own senior staff or if he knowingly ignored the truth. The source of that sentence was a White House official who held a briefing on Thursday afternoon in the White House briefing room that was attended by about 50 reporters, with about 200 or so more on a conference call.

Reporters often request such briefings to be on the record, which would allow the official to be named. But, in this case, the rules of the briefing imposed by the White House required that the official be referred to only as a “senior White House official.” The Times is continuing to abide by that agreement.

In the course of the briefing, the official was asked about the possibility that the summit meeting could be held on June 12, despite the president’s decision to cancel it a day earlier. The discussion was prompted by earlier statements from the president suggesting that the meeting might still happen.

Politico also pushes back against the President’s assertion that there was no basis for the Times report, as does The Washington Post:

President Trump on Saturday falsely accused the New York Times of using an unnamed source “who doesn’t exist” in a story on negotiations between the United States and North Korea, but the official cited spoke to reporters Thursday in a briefing arranged by the White House.

“The Failing @nytimes quotes ‘a senior White House official,’ who doesn’t exist, as saying ‘even if the meeting were reinstated, holding it on June 12 would be impossible, given the lack of time and the amount of planning needed,'” Trump tweeted Saturday morning. “WRONG AGAIN! Use real people, not phony sources.”

The senior White House official cited by the Times spoke to dozens of reporters Thursday at the White House and on a conference call to brief them on Trump’s decision earlier that day to cancel his June 12 summit in Singapore with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.

The Washington Post, which participated in the briefing, agreed to the rules as laid out by White House press officials at the time, which were to refer to the briefer as a senior White House official. The Post also used information from that briefing in subsequent stories and continues to abide by the agreed upon ground rules.

When an Associated Press reporter asked Thursday why the briefing was not on the record, the official noted that Trump had already spoken on the topic through his letter to Kim, as well as at a bill-signing event earlier that day. The White House wanted to “let the president’s remarks stand,” the official said.

The White House press office did not respond to a request for comment Saturday on why Trump was accusing the Times of falsifying the source when it arranged the briefing for reporters and insisted that the official not be named.

Administrations routinely brief reporters, on background, on a variety of issues, but it is extraordinary for a president to then accuse reporters of making up the officials who take part in the event.

Here are the President’s tweets:

This also isn’t the first time that Trump has used his Twitter account to attack the media for reporting about his Administration based on information obtained from sources who asked to remain anonymous. Here are just a few examples:

All of this is consistent, of course, with the President’s general disdain for the media, something that he has displayed from the time he entered the race for President three years ago, a history I have recounted here at OTB several times in the past. As a candidate, Trump attacked individual reporters and news organizations and encouraged his supporters to hold the media in contempt, thus reinforcing the preexisting conservative belief that the media is biased against them. While Trump was merely a private citizen or a candidate for President, this behavior was shocking but, for someone appealing to the right-wing populists that have taken over conservatism generally and the Republican Party in particular, hardly surprising. Indeed, Trump’s rhetoric as a candidate was hardly different from anything that any of the sixteen other people he ran against were saying, and hardly different from what you can hear daily on conservative talk radio, Fox News Channel, or read on a regular basis in the conservative blogosphere.

Now that he’s President, though, Trump’s rhetoric against the press has become worse, and more alarming. Over the course of the past sixteen months, for example, he has called the news media the “enemy of the people”. This is a phrase he has returned to several times over the past sixteen months. Last summer, his admittedly temporary Communications Directory Anthony Scaramucci suggested that reporters should be criminally charged for publishing leaked information regardless of whether or not the information is classified.. During a speech in Arizona last summer, Trump referred to members of the media as “sick people” who “don’t like our country,” and who are “trying to take away our history and our heritage.” That last part, of course, was a reference to the negative coverage that Trump received in the wake of his remarks about the deadly protest in Charlottesville, Virginia. In October, he threatened NBC with unspecified government action including pulling their broadcast license. Earlier this year, the President’s private attorneys to sent a “cease and desist” letter to the author and publisher of a book critical of the Trump White House and once again brought up the possibility of strengthening the nation’s libel laws in response to the negative coverage his Administration was receiving. Throughout it all, the President has frequently referred to so-called “fake news,” a label that he applies quite regularly to anything having to do with the Russia investigation among other matters. That label has been picked up by his supporters and sycophants, who are quick to label any news item they don’t like as “Fake News.” Earlier this month, the President admitted the already blindingly obvious when he said that when he refers to “Fake News” he means any news coverage that is critical of him or his Administration regardless of whether it’s true or not.

This attack on The New York Times isn’t the only time he’s lied recently, he also stood before the graduates of the United States Naval Academy and flat-out lied to them:

  • First, Trump claimed that the latest Defense spending bill had gotten rid of the sequestration rules that many people claimed unduly restrained military spending when he said “We have ended the disastrous defense sequester. No money for the military, those days are over.” This is untrue. While it is true that the Defense spending bill passed in February did bust through the spending caps that had been in place since 2011, during the seven years since then the Defense Department budget exceeded $600 billion per year. That’s obviously not “no money at all.”
  • Second, the President claimed that ”Very soon, you’re going to have 355 beautiful ships — 355. That’s almost a couple hundred more ships.” This is untrue. Currently, there are 283 active duty ships in the Navy. While that number is expected to increase to 355, that number isn’t projected to be reached until 2050, more than 30 years from now.
  • Third, the President claimed that ”We just got you a big pay raise, first time in 10 years.” First of all, military pay has risen every year for the last 10 years, and nearly every year since 1945. During the Obama Administration, the pay raises ranged from “1 percent in 2014 and 2015 to 3.9 percent in 2009.”

This is the President of the United States, the Commander in Chief, lying to the next group of Naval Ensigns and Marine 2nd Lieutenants, some of whom are likely to be called into action due to military missions that he authorizes in the coming years. If he’s going to lie to them, then how do you expect he’s going to treat the American people?

To put it bluntly, the President is a serial liar. As of earlier this month, the fact checkers at The Washington Post had counted over 3,000 lies by the President in his first 469 days in office a pace that would have him at nearly 10,000 lies by the end of his first term and, if he is re-elected, nearly 20,000 by the end of a second term. The most frustrating thing about this is that many times it seems like even the so-called “Fake News” media as Trump calls it isn’t willing to call the President what he is. The headline for the article from The New York Times that is quoted at the top of this post is “Trump Falsely Says Times Made Up Source in Report on Korea Summit Meeting.” And that’s just one example of how the media tends to shy away from calling Trump out for his lies. Every time this President lies, the media calls him something other than what he is. He didn’t make a “misstatement.” He didn’t “falsely claim” something. He lied. Because Donald J. Trump is, and always has been, a serial liar. They shouldn’t be afraid to tell the truth about him.

 

 

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Doug Mataconis
About Doug Mataconis
Doug Mataconis held a B.A. in Political Science from Rutgers University and J.D. from George Mason University School of Law. He joined the staff of OTB in May 2010 and contributed a staggering 16,483 posts before his retirement in January 2020. He passed far too young in July 2021.

Comments

  1. Moosebreath says:

    Meanwhile, Trump flat out admits that he attacks the press to make people not believe any negative stories about him:

    “Stahl was the first television journalist to sit down with Mr. Trump for an interview following his election victory. Their wide-ranging on-camera interview did not delve into Mr. Trump’s attitude toward the press, but Stahl said on Monday night that in a candid, off-camera meeting earlier that year, she pressed him to explain his barrage of insults aimed at journalists, and he gave her a clear explanation:

    “I said, ‘You know, that is getting tired. Why are you doing this? You’re doing it over and over. It’s boring and it’s time to end that,'” Stahl said on stage alongside “PBS Newshour anchor Judy Woodruff.

    “He said, ‘You know why I do it? I do it to discredit you all and demean you all so when you write negative stories about me, no one will believe you.'”

    9
  2. teve tory says:

    And some new lies from 24 hrs ago:

    Donald J. Trump

    @realDonaldTrump
    Put pressure on the Democrats to end the horrible law that separates children from there parents once they cross the Border into the U.S. Catch and Release, Lottery and Chain must also go with it and we MUST continue building the WALL! DEMOCRATS ARE PROTECTING MS-13 THUGS.

    9:59 AM – May 26, 2018

    4
  3. CSK says:

    Why don’t the members of the press call Trump a liar? No one would be happier than I if they did, but I suppose at least some of them are afraid of losing access. Brian Stelter suggested as much when he remarked that Lesley Stahl and Judy Woodruff may have sat on the story about Trump trashing the media to discredit it for fear they’d lose access.

    @teve tory:

    …”there parents”? Well, clearly Donny wrote that Tweet himself.

    9
  4. Todd says:

    Meanwhile the mainstream media, in an effort to appear “objective” continue to treat statements from Trump and his administration as if this were a normal Presidency. We have enough evidence over the past 16 months that pretty much anything said by especially Donald Trump or Sarah Sanders should be presumed to be a lie (or at best an exaggeration), unless there is clear objective evidence that it’s the truth.

    9
  5. Kylopod says:

    @Moosebreath:

    “He said, ‘You know why I do it? I do it to discredit you all and demean you all so when you write negative stories about me, no one will believe you.’”

    This goes along with the Vox piece I always recommend on this topic, “The question of what Donald Trump ‘really believes’ has no answer.” As the piece puts it, “When he utters words, his primary intent is not to say something, to describe a set of facts in the world; his primary intent is to do something, i.e., to position himself in a social hierarchy.”

    4
  6. CSK says:

    Wouldn’t it be great if the “senior White House official” who spoke to “dozens of reporters ” would throw caution to the winds and just out him or herself?

    I can dream.

    6
  7. MBunge says:

    Donald Trump’s a liar? Wow. That’s a real newsflash. I’m so glad OTB is around to keep us up to date on these late-breaking revelations.

    Seriously, Doug Mataconis has become the new Bob Dole, wandering around on stage and shouting “Where’s the outrage!” Except I’m pretty sure that Dole didn’t hide his head in the sand when polling numbers told him things he didn’t want to hear. We’re less than six months away from the 2018 midterms and Mataconis still apparently thinks the problem is he’s not yelling “TRUMP IS AWFUL” loud enough.

    Mike

    2
  8. Kathy says:

    Seeing as many of Mangolini’s lies are part of attacks on the reputations of people and companies, couldn’t he be sued for libel and/or defamation?

    Oh, it probably would mean he’d spend substantial time fighting lawsuits, but I see that as a plus.

    1
  9. teve tory says:

    @CSK:

    Yashar Ali

    Verified account

    @yashar
    Follow Follow @yashar

    The official is Matt Pottinger who serves on the National Security Council. He briefed dozens of reporters on background.

    8:48 AM – 26 May 2018

    Yashar Ali

    Verified account

    @yashar

    2. To be clear, the only reason I tweeted Matt’s name is because I’m not a White House reporter and I was not on this call. I do not believe reporters should violate off record or on background agreements under any circumstances. Not my agreement, so I can tweet.

    8:52 AM – 26 May 2018

    2
  10. Timothy Watson says:

    Doug, honestly, what do you expect? Michelle Wolf was 100% on-point when she pointed out the co-dependent relationship between the corporate-owned media establishment and Donald Trump.

    And what happened? The corporate-owned media found some bullshit pretense (“I think she’s very resourceful, but she burns facts and then she uses that ash to create a perfect smoky eye.”) to invalid everything she said by lying and claiming that Wolf had insulted Huckabee-Sanders’s appearance. This being the same Huckabee-Sanders who spends every fucking day lying to the press and the American people.

    16
  11. teve tory says:

    When Pottinger did the briefing there were ~50 reporters in the room, and several hundred on a conference call. So it was pretty much destined to be revealed. It makes no sense for Cheeto Benito to try to deny it. He’s been more erratic than usual since the Feds got Cohen’s paper trails.

    3
  12. CSK says:

    @teve tory:

    Thanks. I saw that, but the edit function here wouldn’t let me edit my comment.

    1
  13. CSK says:

    @teve tory:

    Trump probably didn’t know Pottinger said it. It’s not what he wants to hear, so his staff would try to keep the knowledge from him.

    2
  14. michael reynolds says:

    @MBunge:
    You admit to worshipping a man you acknowledge to be a liar. And we’re supposed to take you seriously? It’s the intellectual equivalent of saying, “Sure, I eat cat turds from the litter tray, now let me tell you what’s wrong with your steak.”

    28
  15. Kylopod says:

    And that’s just one example of how the media tends to shy away from calling Trump out for his lies. Every time this President lies, the media calls him something other than what he is. He didn’t make a “misstatement.” He didn’t “falsely claim” something. He lied.

    Stating that Trump “falsely claimed” something isn’t equivalent to saying he didn’t lie. It’s simply leaving the question of whether Trump intended to make a false claim up to readers.

    While I don’t disagree with your characterization of Trump as a “serial liar,” I should note that the matter of distinguishing a false statement from a lie is trickier than you are suggesting. Regarding that WaPo stat that you describe as having documented “3,000 lies” that Trump has made since entering office, in fact that article didn’t refer to them as “3,000 lies,” it referred to them as 3,000 “false or misleading statements”–and rightly so. While there are many individual examples where it is possible to demonstrate that Trump knowingly and deliberately distorted the truth, that’s probably not the case for each and every one of the false statements he’s made, especially given how bafflingly ignorant he is on top of things, and how prone he is to seeing what he wants to see. For example, in his statement that the Navy would soon have “355 beautiful ships,” I think it’s entirely possible that that’s what he thinks, based on his own misinterpretation. I fault the press for declining to call something false or inaccurate (as has often been the case with their coverage of global warming over the years, for example), but I don’t fault them for calling something false but erring on the side of withholding speculating about why Trump made the false statement.

    6
  16. teve tory says:

    @CSK:

    Entirely possible. He can’t even bring himself to read the daily intelligence briefing, so these kinds of technical logistics details would be like kryptonite to him.

    1
  17. MarkedMan says:

    @Kylopod:

    I should note that the matter of distinguishing a false statement from a lie is trickier than you are suggesting

    While that statement may be true in general it is not true in this case. We don’t have analyze each of Trump’s statements in isolation and default to giving him the benefit of the doubt. He has lied on the record continuously for his whole life on matters ranging from the trivial to literally life and death. The idea that at this point we are obligated to parse out whether a given falsehood was intentional or not is ridiculous.

    3
  18. CSK says:

    @MarkedMan:

    It’s an interesting question, though, whether he lies mostly to conceal the truth or mostly out of his monumental ignorance. There are many, many, many cases in which it’s staggeringly clear he’s lying to conceal the truth. In this particular instance, it may be that he was ignorant of what Pottinger said–and equally ignorant of the fact that you can’t prepare for a summit in two weeks. That takes months.

    2
  19. teve tory says:

    “President Trump is the leader of the United States. He is also a liar. This has been well-documented. Lying was a big part of his business strategy … Now, as commander in chief, he misleads the public constantly”

    -brian Stelter on CNN a few minutes ago.

    4
  20. DrDaveT says:

    It’s Time for Republicans to Call the President What He Is, a Liar

    FTFY (including the capitalization). Everyone but Republicans and their PR enterprise have been calling him a liar all along. Nothing will change until the alleged patriots in the GOP reject the graft, as it were.

    7
  21. gVOR08 says:

    @Kylopod:

    I should note that the matter of distinguishing a false statement from a lie is trickier than you are suggesting.

    People wasted a lot of time and effort arguing about whether W lied about Saddam’s WMD or if he believed bad intelligence. Setting aside that the decision to go predated the bad intelligence, it was his damn job to be sure he knew what he was doing before he took us to war. If he knew the truth, he lied, if he didn’t know the truth, he wasn’t doing his job. So he’s culpable either way, let’s just save time and say he lied.

    From a pragmatic point of view I find all this dancing on the head of a pin about what constitutes a lie a waste of time. The fact is that Trump repeatedly says things that are not true. What is in his heart may be unknowable, but it’s irrelevant. His reasons and methods for saying untrue things don’t matter. For most people, “Is he a liar?” is a moral question. The pragmatic question is, “Can we trust anything he says?” No, we can’t. Obviously. He’s a liar. Why purpose is served by not saying so?

    4
  22. Tony W says:

    Maybe the answer is to fight fire with fire.

    I’ll start:
    – Many people are saying that Trump likes to put live goldfish in his ears and sing Dixie
    – I’m hearing from some very smart people that Trump is sleeping with his White House gardener, Fred
    – When Trump paid off the porn star to keep her abortion quiet, that was done with money laundered from illegal Russian influence peddling.
    – Every Monday night, Trump sacrifices 3 white babies on a White House altar, while chanting white-supremacist slogans, before retiring to bed with 4 Big Macs and a root beer.
    – Maybe we revive the whole Trump/NAMBLA thing.

    Seriously, “what’s good for the goose” and all?

    6
  23. teve tory says:

    Trump lies every day. Earlier I quoted a lie he told yesterday, Well here’s a lie he told the day before that. Talking about Chicago he said: “The killings are at a record pace”.

    That’s not even remotely true. In 2017 there were 665 homicides in Chicago. In 1992 there were 943. The murder rate in Chicago has fallen about 50% in the last 25 years.

    6
  24. JKB says:

    @teve tory:

    They Comeyed the source.

    No a reporter at the meeting didn’t break the agreement and out the source, but they told a friend, who released the name to friends in the media.

    Of course, there’s a recording which refutes the NYTimes “impossible” statement. But it does prove that Trump was wrong, the NY Times did not “quote” the source, they just totally misconstrued what was said.

  25. Kylopod says:

    @MarkedMan:

    We don’t have analyze each of Trump’s statements in isolation and default to giving him the benefit of the doubt.

    This has nothing to do with “giving him the benefit of the doubt,” it has to do with recognizing that the president is ignorant and delusional on top of being dishonest, and just because he has lied a lot doesn’t mean it is accurate to characterize every single factually untrue statement he makes as a lie.

    1
  26. Kylopod says:

    @gVOR08:

    People wasted a lot of time and effort arguing about whether W lied about Saddam’s WMD or if he believed bad intelligence.

    You view it as a waste of time; I do not. There’s no question that Bush received bad intelligence; he didn’t concoct the WMDs out of whole cloth. But he exaggerated the certainty of the report, and he did intentionally mislead the public by repeatedly implying there was a connection between Saddam and 9/11 (as in his statement at one of the 2004 debates, “The enemy attacked us,” in response to a question about why he invaded Iraq).

    If he knew the truth, he lied, if he didn’t know the truth, he wasn’t doing his job. So he’s culpable either way, let’s just save time and say he lied.

    Bull. There’s an important difference in moral culpability there; it’s pretty much the same type of distinction we make between murder and manslaughter. I happen to think Bush was guilty of a combination of intentional deceit and negligent acceptance of questionable info, but I’ve reached that conclusion by careful consideration of the facts over several years; I didn’t just throw my hands in the air and declare that just because the outcome was terrible, that makes what he did a “lie.”

    2
  27. teresa says:

    you do know that BOTH sides lie ALL the time, I am no trumpette but when you give me articles by 2 very left leaning mags, who both dislike trump in every way, i won’t read it. i would say the same about the right, i like to connect my own dots w the correct information. I can determine which one i want to believe or which one has more truth.

    1
  28. teve tory says:

    another trump lie yesterday:

    Donald J. Trump

    Verified account

    @realDonaldTrump
    Follow Follow @realDonaldTrump
    More
    With Spies, or “Informants” as the Democrats like to call them because it sounds less sinister (but it’s not), all over my campaign, even from a very early date, why didn’t the crooked highest levels of the FBI or “Justice” contact me to tell me of the phony Russia problem?

    12:28 PM – 26 May 2018

    The FBI warned the trump campaign in the fall of 2016 that Russians might try to infiltrate or spy on his campaign. Of course, the trump campaign was already in bed with Russians by that point.

    8
  29. Dave says:

    @Todd: If you like your current coverage you can keep it. Insurance will be cheaper with the ACA. Wow politicians lie? Who knew. Oh yeah how about those shovel ready jobs? Fake news? Let’s ask Dan Rather about fake documents. No one knows how Mueller investigation will turn out but it does seem Hillary created fake news to start it and the MSM ate it up. So while I don’t like the way he operates I don’t blame him for attack on media when they do select to publish incorrect info and then not publish corrections. They never attacked old Bill C or counted up his lies or stuck up for the women he attacked and abused sexually but Trump gets hit for consensual sex. Really big double standard.

    2
  30. al Ameda says:

    @MBunge:

    Donald Trump’s a liar? Wow. That’s a real newsflash. I’m so glad OTB is around to keep us up to date on these late-breaking revelations.

    Seriously, Doug Mataconis has become the new Bob Dole, wandering around on stage and shouting “Where’s the outrage!” Except I’m pretty sure that Dole didn’t hide his head in the sand when polling numbers told him things he didn’t want to hear. We’re less than six months away from the 2018 midterms and Mataconis still apparently thinks the problem is he’s not yelling “TRUMP IS AWFUL” loud enough.

    So, am I right to assume that you consider Trump’s behavior and comportment to be ‘normal’ ?
    Or that you don’t mind because, as Charlie Sheen and Mike Pence say, Trump is ‘winning.’?

    Or is it as simple as, you’re fine with his constant deliberate lies and misrepresentations, and that that you have no problem with his various personal attacks, such as on Amazon because he hates founder and CEO Jeff Bezos, things of that nature?

    11
  31. teve tory says:

    Coincidentally the political types are debating this on twitter this weekend. Here are a couple comments:

    Mathew Ingram

    Verified account

    @mathewi
    Follow Follow @mathewi
    More
    Replying to @joshtpm
    I keep coming back to the legal definition of making a false statement, which is that the speaker either knew or *should have known* i.e. was in a position to know that something was false but said it anyway. That’s a lie

    10:06 AM – 27 May 2018

    Josh Marshall

    Verified account

    @joshtpm
    Indeed, in each case it comes down to a question of accountability. It is not the world’s responsibility to hypothesize new theories or make excuses for why you say so much bullshit. Accountability. It’s on you. The world is in a permissive parenting relationship w Donald Trump.

    10:57 AM – 27 May 2018

    6
  32. An Interested Party says:

    Of course no one could reasonably argue that politicians dont lie, but to the extent that Trump does? Many people light camp fires but he’s burning down the whole forest…oh and someone tell us how Hillary Clinton is responsible for the Mueller investigation…

    2
  33. CSK says:

    @MBunge:

    You do realize, Mike, that when Trump lies, he’s lying to you, too, not just those of us who don’t like Trump. You should get that through your head.

    Trump is lying to you.

    Repeat as necessary.

    11
  34. Gustopher says:

    He’s the President of the United States, and the Leader of the Free World, so why not take him at his word? Isn’t that what we would do in a normal world?

    He’s not a liar, he’s dangerously misinformed and/or has no grasp on reality due to dementia.

    It wasn’t 3,000 lies in his first year, it is 3,000 moments where his dementia was beginning to show.

  35. Hal_10000 says:

    This, to me, is one of the most alarming things about Trump. We’ve had Presidents who lied or shaded the truth or obfuscated. They sort of have to since absolute honesty would be political suicide. But Trump is creating and entire alternative reality where everyone is a liar except him, truth doesn’t exist except where he says it. He’s gotten worse as time has gone on, moving from lies that take a bit of explanation to simply making things up (ex: he says violent crime in Chicago is still rising; it’s down this year although still extremely high).

    One of things I hated most about Communist was their cold-blooded murder of the truth. And I hate it about Trumpism too.

    10
  36. CSK says:

    @Gustopher:

    Trump’s been lying all his life. He may well be suffering from dementia, but reality to him has always been what he says it is. This is nothing new.

    3
  37. Yank says:

    I think Harry Frankfurt has it right that Trump is a bullshitter that falls into the demagogue category. The media isn’t able to deal with this because the only way to deal with this type of bullshitter is by challenging the lies repeatedly. But thanks to years of gaming the refs by conservatives politicians and media personalities, the media tends covers lies as “mere misstatements” or “factual errors”, instead of lies.

    Off-topic, this is why Biden (if he runs) would destroy Trump. He is a much better communicator then Hillary ever was and can challenge this nonsense head on.

    2
  38. TM01 says:

    Trump attacked individual reporters and news organizations and encouraged his supporters to hold the media in contempt

    No one needed Trump for us to hold the media in contempt.

    They already hate us deplorables.

    It’s refreshing to see a gop politician finally fight back.

    It’s one of those things we were waiting for.

    After years of GWB just sitting there taking it, Trump is a breath of fresh air.

    You consistently fail to grasp why people like Trump.

    And his open criticism of the press, which is well deserved btw, is way better than a president that actually declares war on the media.

    I’d love to see Trump use the espionage act against, oh, say, Jim Acosta, and watch you all freak out.

    Of course, he won’t.

    Because Obama was the actual authoritarian.

    If you like your delusions, you can keep your delusions.

    No lie.

    2
  39. JohnMcC says:

    There’s an aspect of this discussion not touched by the OP or comments so far: It has long been a part of the right-wing ‘message’ that liberals are ‘post-modern’ in disregarding truth.

    Did anyone but me note that Mayor Giuliani told CNN ‘the truth is relative. Mueller’s team might have one truth but we have a different truth.’ (Swear it’s what I heard as I sat there dumbfounded.)

    The right-wing is the source of endless and endlessly repeated haughty lectures that ‘words have meaning’ and ‘ideas have consequences’. Surely everyone here has seen such hypocritical remarks.

    They have come out of hiding and they have such committed followers that they no longer care what they say. “Conservatives” eat it up like at an all-you-can-eat buffet.

    This is serious. And one version of American politics is going to win and the other is going to get crushed. And they hold the important ground.

    6
  40. CSK says:

    @TM01:

    What you’re not getting is that Trump isn’t on your side. He’s on his side. Trump is for Trump. Period. He doesn’t love his country. It’s just a cash cow to him. Why do you think he decided to rescue ZTE two days after China announced it was investing a half-billion dollars in his Indonesian golf club and resort? You’re just something Trump can exploit, and you love him because he’s a crude slob, and thus, a “real American.”

    16
  41. CSK says:

    @JohnMcC:

    I believe you. Remember when Kellyanne Conway spoke of “alternative facts”?

    3
  42. An Interested Party says:

    They already hate us deplorables.

    Oh poor you…such a victim you are…it’s amazing you can even make the time to post comments here, what with how horrible life is for you…but as someone upthread mentioned, your hero isn’t about to help you, he’s much more worried about helping himself…part of your recovery from being a victim would require you to stop being a dummy…

    12
  43. gVOR08 says:

    @CSK:

    What you’re not getting is that Trump isn’t on your side. He’s on his side.

    That’s the thing that leaves me shaking my head about Trumpkins. Yes, politicians lie, the media lies and distorts (although not in the ways they think), the middle class is not doing well, the poor always fare badly (like the Trumpkins care), and our “elites”, most of whom are Republicans, are pretty much feathering their own nests and stumbling around in confusion. But how the heck was electing an ignorant, lying, Republican, New York self proclaimed billionaire supposed to help?

    10
  44. CSK says:

    @gVOR08:

    Because they not only identified with him, they merged their identities with his, the way they did with Sarah Palin. Why? Because Palin and Trump talk like “real Americans,” not like fancy-shmancy “elites.”

    Talking like an “elite,” by the way, means being literate and coherent.

    7
  45. Not the IT Dept. says:

    It’s time to start? Hell, I’ve been calling him a liar for over two years now. What took you so long, Doug?

    2
  46. teve tory says:

    A year ago I wouldn’t have thought it possible that Trump/Dennison/JohnBarron could keep up this rate of lying, but here we are a year later and he’s tweeted three lies just since Friday. He’s pathological.

    2
  47. Guarneri says:

    Ah, yes.

    Oh for the days of “I did not have sex…,” “you can keep your doctor,” “your premiums will decline $2000,” “It was anger over a YouTube video,” or Rhoads we can lie to these reporters and they’ll write whatever we say.

    Those were the salad days of political honesty, weren’t they?

    But I remember the stalwart defender of public integrity, Doug Mataconis, and his serial posts about the horror of all that blatant dishonesty on substantive issues.

    Well, actually I don’t remember that………

    1
  48. al Ameda says:

    @Guarneri:

    Oh for the days of “I did not have sex…,” “you can keep your doctor,” “your premiums will decline $2000,” “It was anger over a YouTube video,” or Rhoads we can lie to these reporters and they’ll write whatever we say

    Oh yeah, “both sides do it.” I’ve heard that before.
    One side does it 95 times the other side 5 times, but, you know, it’s all the same.
    By the way, just in case ZeroHedge or the Russian Consulate in your city didn’t get the news to you, Hillary was investigated by Republicans for nearly 4 years for the events at Benghazi.

    3
  49. Mikey says:

    @Guarneri: Oh, for the days presidential campaigns didn’t conspire with hostile foreign powers to steal an election and then lie about it constantly. Those were the salad days of political honesty, weren’t they?

    1
  50. gVOR08 says:

    @Mikey: IIRC both Stevenson and Kennedy got offers of help from Russia. They politely declined, had a good laugh, and reported the conversations. I forget if it was Gore or Kerry that got a similar call and it was pretty much, ‘Get me the FBI on line 2!’ But this bunch, when faced with the possibility of something illegal and improper, “I love it.” And 35%, including our trolls, agree.

    2