Russias Interference In The 2016 Election
This Russia thing with Trump and Russia is a made-up story, Trump said May 11, 2018.
From Day One, Trump has disputed what the U.S. intelligence community has concluded as a fact: Russia interfered in the 2016 U.S. election with the goal of boosting his bid while working to tear down his Democratic opponent, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
He repeatedly called the then-special counsel Robert Mueller’s two-year probe into the matter a “witch hunt against him and the inference itself a hoax, despite clear and sizable evidence that the Russian government worked to influence the outcome of the election in sweeping and systematic fashion, as Muellers report concluded. Multiple people were indicted as a result of the investigation, including a former Trump campaign aide, while other close Trump associates were charged with unrelated crimes uncovered in the course of Muellers probe.
The report gathered evidence that the president worked to stymie the investigation, but determined that the Department of Justice could not charge a sitting president and therefore would not determine whether he had broken the law. Trump, meanwhile, falsely claimed that Mueller’s report totally exonerated him from any wrongdoing, including allegations of his campaigns collusion with Russia.
When asked directly if the special counsel did actually totally exonerate the president, Mueller said no.
Trump Just Explained Why He Is A Congenital Liar
According to the fact-checkers, Donald Trump tells an average of over five lies per day. While we are all beginning to adapt to that reality, it is stunning that the President of the United States is such a congenital liar.
Those of us who are acquainted with facts can see the pattern of his liesthey are always in service of his narcissistic ego. But at a fundraising speech in Missouri last night, the president himself took it one step further. He told the story about a conversation he had with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.
Trudeau came to see me. Hes a good guy, Justin. He said, No, no, we have no trade deficit with you, we have none. Donald, please, Trump said, mimicking Trudeau, according to audio of the private event in Missouri obtained by The Washington Post. Nice guy, good-looking guy, comes in Donald, we have no trade deficit. Hes very proud because everybody else, you know, were getting killed.
So, hes proud. I said, Wrong, Justin, you do. I didnt even know. I had no idea. I just said, Youre wrong. You know why? Because were so stupid.
What we have is a president who is publicly bragging about the fact that, in a meeting with a foreign head of state, he was ignorant about our trade relationship and, he made up a lie. Weve known for a while now that what he said to Trudeau in that meeting wasnt true, the United States does not have a trade deficit with Canada.
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He’s Something Worse: A Bullshit Artist
Falsehoods fly out of Donald Trumps mouth with such unstoppable frequency that its tempting to describe him as a liar. Among the recent Trumpian untruths is his claim to have seen a video showing thousands and thousands of Muslim Americans cheering 9/11 in Jersey City, New Jersey, an event there is no record of, video or otherwise. Trump has also retweeted and vigorously defended the claim that 81 percent of whites who are murdered are killed by blacks . And he has asserted, contrary to fact, that the federal government is sending refugees to states with Republicans, not to the Democrats.
The contrast Frankfurt draws between lying and bullshit is sharp. It is impossible for someone to lie unless he thinks he knows the truth, Frankfurt observes. Producing bullshit requires no such conviction. A person who lies is thereby responding to the truth, and he is to that extent respectful of it. When an honest man speaks, he says only what he believes to be true and for the liar, it is correspondingly indispensable that he considers his statements to be false. For the bullshitter, however, all bets are off. He does not reject the authority of the truth, as the liar does, and oppose himself to it. He pays no attention to it at all. By virtue of this, bullshit is a greater enemy of truth than lies are.
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Xenophobes The Economically Disadvantaged
Another segment of hard-core supporters feel strongly that America is under attack by foreigners, including Central Americans crossing the southern border. They also falsely believe the Chinese sent COVID-19 to kill Americans.
Sixty years ago, these supporters would have been in the my country right or wrong camp supporting American involvement in the Vietnam War. They believe they are supporting traditional American values, free enterprise, hard work and white society against destructive change.
For these supporters, Trump promised the wall along the southern border to keep out rapists, talks often about the Chinese virus and says kind things about counter-protesters, even excusing the actions of the young man, Kyle Rittenhouse, accused of killing two people at a Black Lives Matter demonstration in Wisconsin.
A sizeable segment of Trump supporters, and the ones who often get the most attention, are the economically abandoned. When Trump was elected, some in the media were quick to dismiss his supporters as lacking education, and therefore unable to grasp that Trump lied, embellished the truth and stoked bigotry.
Thats unfair on several levels.
For one, as corporations move their manufacturing offshore and the U.S. economy relies more on high-tech jobs, the less educated have lost their jobs, whether in the coal mines of West Virginia or the industrial areas of the Midwest.
Donald Trump Is An Idiot And A Liar Americans Say In New Poll
Celeste Katz U.S.Donald TrumpPollingQuinnipiac pollPolls
Americans aren’t damning President Donald Trump with faint praise, according to a new poll: They’re mostly just damning him.
When asked for the first word that pops into their head when they think of the commander-in-chief, U.S. voters gave such glowing descriptors as “idiot,” “liar” and “a**hole,” according to a new Quinnipiac University survey out Tuesday.
In an open-ended question, Quinnipiac asked respondents over the phone, “What is the first word that comes to mind when you think of President Trump?” A total of 53 people responded with the word “idiot, 44 with “liar” and 36 with “incompetent.” Another 26 people gave the response “a**hole,” while 19 respondents said “moron,” 18 said “arrogant” and 17 said “disgusting.”
Word Cloud – What is the first word that comes to mind when you think of President Trump?
Quinnipiac University Poll
“President Donald Trump is known for hurling insults, and he’s getting slammed right back. ‘Idiot’ is just one of a string of insults thrown his way by American voters,” said Tim Malloy, Quinnipiac University Poll assistant director, in a release about the poll, which echoed the results of a similar survey conducted in May.
Other words the pollsters heard more infrequently about Trumpat least five times eachincluded “businessman,” “jerk,” “powerful” and “evil.”
Quinnipiac University Poll
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He Averaged 49 Falsehoods Per Day In His First Days In The Oval Office And Now 9 Lies Per Day
This article originally appeared on Raw Story
Attempting to make sense of President Donald Trumps flurry of lies this week particularly with regard to what he has called Spygate MSNBC host Craig Melvin invited a research psychologist to explain the presidents descent into lying almost all of the time.
Melvin kicked off the topic by noting, A recent CBS poll shows 53 percent, a majority of Americans, believe the Russia investigation is politically motivated thats up from 48 percent in December. Why? It could very well come down to one thing: President Trumps lies the sheer number and frequency of them. Researchers have taken a look in the Washington Posts fact checker on President Trump and found the president is now lying more often. He averaged 4.9 falsehoods per day in his first days in the oval office and now 9 lies per day.
The MSNBC host then turned to Tali Sharot, an associate professor of cognitive neurosciences at University College London, and posed the question: Why an uptick in the presidents lies?
We dont know specifically about why theres an escalation in the presidents lies, Sharot began. It could be many reasons maybe certain lies covered up with more and more lies, maybe falsehoods repeated so many times they are considered to be true, which makes them repeated more.
Describing clinical trials she conducted, Sharot used an analogy to describe Trumps explosion of lying.
Watch the video below via MSNBC:
Fact Checking Is No Check On Trump Lies
Its likely that no American had more lies debunked than the 45th president, and no one has ever been more checked, to less effect, by fact checkers. His hurricane of half-truths is only picking up speed.
In his first 100 days, the Washington Posts Fact Checker tracked Trump making 4.9 false or misleading claims known to people who dont have wary editors as lies a day. That number has more than tripled to 15.4 in the last three months.
Trump prides himself on repeating the debunked lies so often that youd think he was earning residuals on them. Of the 4,713 false claims the Fact Checker vetted in Trumps first 592 days, 160 were lies he repeated at least three times. The message to his fans here is not only that Trump has the power to say what the reality is, as Greg Sargent notes, but also that they should continue to repeat his lies.
Saying something obviously untrue, and making your subordinates repeat it with a straight face in their own voice, is a particularly startling display of power over them, says political theory professor Jacob T. Levy.
Totalitarians recognize that getting their subordinates to repeat lies not only asserts your power over them, Levy notes, it makes them complicit and compromised.
The time has come to admit that what were doing is not working. To admit that fact checking Trump is not only a colossal failure, it seems to be spurring him on to lie more.
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Don’t Be An Unpaid Volunteer For Trump
Start by not helping him at least until the last poll closes on Nov. 6.
Leave the fact checking to the people who get paid to filter Trumps muck. And encourage the media to embrace best practices designed to minimize the effect of propaganda such as the truth sandwich advised by cognitive scientist George Lakoff: The truth, the Trump claim, the fact-check.
For the rest of us, remember that our fact checks wont be any more effective than the media or Justice or the FBI. Liberals brains assume disproving lies will make them go away. The opposite is true. When you repeat Trump, you help Trump, Lakoff wrote. If repetition didnt work, businesses wouldnt spend trillions on advertising.
Trump cant be shamed and he knows that by encouraging you to correct or rage at his lies, hes shaping the debate. If youre making it easier for anyone to see his words by repeating or retweeting them or even quote-retweeting them, youre just an unpaid volunteer in the Trump campaign.
Refuse to help Trump even if it denies you the pleasure of dunking on him. Next time you feel the urge to help Trump, consider helping a swing candidate you care about instead. Volunteer, donate or just share their messages. Every little bit you can do helps.
Dont believe me? Ask Trump. Actually, dont bother.
Jason Sattler, a writer based in Ann Arbor, Michigan, is a member of USA TODAYs Board of Contributors and host of “The GOTMFV Show” podcast. Follow him on Twitter: .
Review Of Lying In State: Why Presidents Lie
LYING IN STATE: Why Presidents Lie — and Why Trump Is Worse
Do you regret at all, all the lying youve done to the American people?
When a HuffPost reporter posed that query to President Trump last month, Trump briefly asked for clarification, then, without answering or showing much concern moved to a different question.
Trumps deceit, with all its variety and compulsiveness, is a shocking element of his time in office, shocking in its regularity and in its seeming lack of political consequences. The Washington Post has catalogued more than 20,000 Trump falsehoods, and multiple volumes with ominous titles such as The Death of Truth and Gaslighting America have chronicled the phenomenon. CNN even ran a special report with Watergate undertones: All the Presidents Lies.
So, to gaze upon the extended dance mix of mendacity that is the Trump presidency and counter but all presidents lie would seem the high point of whataboutism, an indefensible deflection of a practice that is corrosive to public trust and democracy.
Except that, well, all presidents do lie.
This working-the-refs strategy became prevalent in the 1980s, Alterman writes . But it was in the Obama years that Republicans realized they would rarely pay a price for lying about President Barack Obama, whether his policies, his politics or even his birth. Which brings us, inevitably, to Trump.
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What Are The Dangers Of Allowing Trump To Dominate Us Political Culture
Donald Trump speaks to the media as he departs the White House in Washington, D.C., in January 2019.
One hardly needs to make the case that Donald Trump is a liar. Neither is it news that this is true of previous presidents as well. At the same time, the depth and breadth of Trumps dishonesty is something decidedly new. As the MSNBC host Chris Hayes wrote in a New York Times book review 18 months after Trumps inauguration: The president is a liar. He lies about matters of the utmost consequence and about the most trivial . He lies about things you can see with your own eyes. He lies about things he said just moments ago. He lies the way a woodpecker attacks a tree: compulsively, insistently, instinctively.
Adapted from Lying in State: Why Presidents LieAnd Why Trump Is Worse by Eric Alterman. Copyright © 2020 by Eric Alterman. Available from Basic Books.
Trumps ability to lie without concern for credibility is gruesomely impressive. In one three-day period in April 2019, Trump managed to make 171 false or misleading claims, according to The Washington Post fact-checking team. During a telephone interview with the Fox News talk-show host Sean Hannity, he managed 45 falsehoods in 45 minutes. This degree of lying qualifies as pathological, and so yes, America has a pathological liar for its president. How did this happen? And what are the dangers of allowing this liar to dominate US political culture?
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