“But better to get hurt by the truth than comforted with a lie.” — Khaled Hosseini
For a guy who was so hard on Ted Cruz for untruthfulness, President Donald Trump sets a new standard for lying. According to a recent report in the Washington Post, Trump has lied more than 3,000 times since taking office on Jan. 20, 2017.
You remember that day, don’t you? The Donald claimed, falsely, that it was the biggest inauguration crowd in history. That wasn’t true. Of course, if he thought it was true, then he wasn’t really lying, was he? He was just mistaken.
This is a lesson Sarah Huckabee Sanders understands only too well. He also said he’d won by the biggest Electoral College margin, ever. Also demonstrably false. He said Obama wiretapped Trump Tower. Can’t really prove a negative, can we? But the burden of proof is on Don, and he hasn’t offered any evidence to prove his assertion.
Some of the falsehoods are not so benign. He claimed the meeting between Jared and the Russians was about adoption. He knew it wasn’t about that. The meeting had been advertised as a chance for Don, Jr. to get “some dirt” on Hillary Clinton. Donald Trump invented the adoption story, knowing that the truth of his son conferring with foreign nationals during an election campaign might be unseemly. So, Big Don invented the Russian adoption story.
And how many times since then has he said, “no collusion”? Hmm. Little Don meeting with Russians to get dirt. Manafort charged. Flynn convicted by plea. Others in legal difficulty. This doesn’t pass the smell test.
Being a liar is not unique to Donald Trump, but he has shown a propensity for lying seldom seen so often in other public figures.
He didn’t know anything about the $130,000 paid in hush money to the porn star, by his own account. He did meet privately with her in a bungalow, a couple of times. But nothing happened. He says. She says they had unprotected sexual intercourse* during one of the encounters, after she lightly swatted him on the buttocks, using a Time magazine on which he was featured on the cover, while he was clad in tightie whities. This actually happened some years back, but the hush money came just before the presidential election. Would he have us believe that is only coincidental?
And Don reimbursed his attorney, Mike Cohen. He said he didn’t. Rudy Guiliani, Trump’s new attorney who’s going to straighten all this out, said he did. Then Trump said he did. Now we hear that Rudy is a very nice guy, but doesn’t know the facts of the case.
Do you believe Donald Trump about this? I don’t. I wasn’t there, so I can’t know for sure. But I believe Stormy Daniels. I find her more credible than the President of the United States. Bigly more credible. And what is that? Sad! Ain’t that a shame?
*The lack of employment of a condom was also reported by Karen McDougal, the Playboy Playmate who reported a sexual encounter with Donald (which he also denies). This depiction runs contrary to Don’s defense when he was confronted with the “pee tape” story. Don challenged that claim, about watching two Russian prostitutes urinating on each other, by stating he was a “germophobe.” Should we believe Don? It seems he doesn’t like to shake hands. But, according to reports I deem more credible than his word, he likes to get busy without putting a helmet on that soldier.
Mr. Basura,
Your hate of President Trump knows no bounds. I would think you would be overjoyed at the thought of a President that may have had affairs before his time in office, since Willie Clinton was dallying with a fat clerk in the White House. Maybe you’re just jealous at least President Trump has different taste in women than the Arkansas hillbilly?
Personally, I think the vast majority of politicians and famous people use their influence and power to do and get whatever they want, be it having sex to doing illegal drugs. Willie Clinton was a known cocaine sucker according to his brother Roger “his nose is like a vacuum cleaner”. And you wonder why the majority of the American people disrespect the politicians of the past 30 years? Lying, cheating, all fair in love an war!
At least the country is moving forward instead of miring in another 8 years of Obama incompetence and wasteful initiatives.
And the smart people of the country who didn’t vote for Hillary Clinton did so because she was a flawed candidate and physically ill. She is suffering from a malady that involves seizures (as evidenced by her episode entering a van, passing out, and having to be physically dragged into the van).
Build the wall, build the Wall, build the WALL! We don’t have a politician in the White House, he’s neither Democrat or Republican, he is Trump – getting things done for the American people. For you haters, and there’s plenty out there, I guess Bernie is the only alternative. An old, white, Socialist. Good luck with that.
Mr. Free Market,
I would posit that your hate of anyone left of an Evangelical knows no bounds. In your tirade you resort to juvenile name-calling that has no place when maturely and civilly discussing issues as important as the moral fiber of a United States president.
Personal moral integrity used to be paramount to being elected to the highest office in the land, and being found out to be less than that was reason for embarrassment and self-withdrawal from a political race.
I don’t care if a person’s name is Clinton or Trump. Moral indiscretion is unacceptable in the office of president. It is indicative of a flawed character, and the more prevalent and numerous those indiscretions, the less worthy a person is to even be considered to hold the most powerful post on the planet. It is also indicative of one’s ability to find certain moral “flexibility” in other areas that can be detrimental to the running of this nation.
Go ahead and support the current moral degenerate. It will only serve to undermine the office, and encourage future candidates to flaunt cultural and moral standards.
You denigrate those who voted for Clinton in the last election because she is unfit to serve. Put the shoe on the other foot. We were given a choice between two flawed candidates. I’d have preferred “none of the above.”
Ms. Mandeville,
I appreciate your comments, as everyone – everyone has a right to their opinion and viewpoint. Such is yours and well done. I take criticism well, unlike most of my liberal detractors.
As for candidates for president, we had two evils. Evidently enough people in enough states voted for what they considered the lesser of two evils, thus enabling candidate Trump to become President through the electoral college. He played the game to win, Mrs. Clinton listened to her advisors and figured she had it in the bag. Trump won the states he had to win, Mrs. Clinton didn’t.
As for her husband’s encounters, attacks and in a few cases, outright rape of other women, he was and is a known sexual predator. President Trump can speak for himself. I’m sure he’s not an angel, but what president has been or is? But it is interesting that Ms. Clifford (Stormy Daniels) cannot remember what encounter they had sexual relations or not? She denied she did, but after President Trump won, she must have remembered? If she considered credible, why not all the women that accused Clinton of his encounters and they were called liars and sluts. And who but Mrs. Clinton hurling the insults. And we all know how credible she was and is. A colossal liar and reprobate. She needs to be investigated for her activities in the election and dossier disaster into the Russia, Russia, Russia collusion allegations. She leaked emails through her private server – it was hacked by several enemy governments.
Ms. Daniels is not the issue here. The issue is the moral fiber of the person who inhabits the White House. And you are correct when you suggest that most presidents have not been angels. The closest I can imagine were Jimmy Carter and Gerald Ford, who, at least, appear not to have been philanderers.
But you voted for Mrs. Clinton! Be honest and fess up. I voted for Trump because I didn’t want another 4 to 8 years of President Obama policies and derangement syndrome, favoring radical Islamists, giving money to our enemies ($150,000,000,000 in cash to Iran), trying to destroy the 2nd Amendment, expanding Federal programs, and killing more babies in the womb, and unrestricted illegal immigration.
And if she won, the former President (your much loved Bill), could sleaze around the White House and have unfettered access to attack more women. He should be called what he is and be put in the same category as Weinstein, Lauer, and other Liberal scamps disrespecting, abusing, and attacking women with unwanted advances. You can take a hillbilly out of Arkansas, but you can’t take Arkansas out of the hillbilly.
I’m sure there’s good people in Arkansas, but Bill Clinton isn’t and hasn’t ever been one of them.
I’m not sure where you got the idea that I love Bill Clinton. But it’s irrelevant. Whether or not Hillary gained the White House would not prevent Bill from being Bill. If you chose Trump because you fear Bill Clinton’s sexual predilections, I would suggest that your interests might just lie in the wrong place. But you say you did not want another 4 – 8 years of Democratic rule. That’s fine. We must make sure that our decisions are based on information on the issues, not on who’s the popular bad boy hanging on to the candidate. Anything other than the issues is merely a red herring.
What, no defense of Trump?
Trump is Trump.
In 1980 Trump inported 200 undocumented Polish demolition workers so he could save money by not paying union wages to the NYS Laborers Union to tear down the Bonwit Teller building that is now where Trump Tower is located. In a sealed document that was latter made public we learn that Trump paid a $1.4M settlement.
http://time.com/5039109/donald-trump-undocumented-polish-trump-tower-bonwit-teller/
Foreign workers are bad for America? This year the Trump Organization posted 144 seasonal jobs for their properties in Florida and New York; 143 went to workers requiring a H2-B visa and one American was hired.
In 1998, evangelical minister Franklin Graham wrote an opinion piece for the Wall Street Journal about then President Clinton:
“The God of the Bible says that what one does in private does matter. Mr. Clinton’s months-long extramarital sexual behavior in the Oval Office now concerns him and the rest of the world, not just his immediate family. If he will lie to or mislead his wife and daughter, those with whom he is most intimate, what will prevent him from doing the same to the American public?”
Now that Donald Trump is president we see Mr. Graham has a different opinion. In May 2018:
“I think this thing with Stormy Daniels and so forth is nobody’s business. And we’ve got other business at hand that we need to deal with.”
A Detroit News opinion columnist wrote a very direct piece about how the GOP is now Trump’s party:
“Voters who say they get their news primarily from Fox chose Trump over party by a 66.4 percent-21.6 percent margin. Those whose main news sources are local TV, the networks and newspapers picked the party over Trump by a nearly two-to-one margin.”
With those kinds of numbers MI Republicans like US Senate hopeful Sandy Pansler and MI gubernatorial hopeful AG Bill Schuette are in lockstep with Trump and his policies.
Where I sit, I see a US president who calls any news that doesn’t cast him in a favorable light “Fake News,” even when multiple sources can prove him wrong.
We have a US president who publicly calls for the resignation of a sitting US Senator because he spoke out against making the president’s physician in charge of the VA, though he had zero administrative experience with any large organization. (Note Admiral Jackson isn’t returning to his old job as White House physician, either)
We have a president who says on “Fox and Friends” he may have to “step in and take action” with the US DoJ. Last I checked we have three branches of government for a reason and the executive branch cannot usurp the DoJ on the whim of whoever happens to be President. We have a president who has said he wants to be able to sue reporters for libel, like Erdogan has done in Turkey. Journalists in Putin’s Russia just die under various circumstances.
There are some who will read this column and will identify with the Trump supporters who were in Macomb County for the Trump rally a few weeks ago.
I happen to agree with Nolan Finley of the Detroit News who accurately points out that honesty, truth and having the US be a nation ruled by law doesn’t matter to President Trump and doesn’t matter to his supporters.
That scares the hell out of me.