The director, the very complicated James Comey, didn’t use the L-word in his congressional testimony Monday. Comey serves at the pleasure of the president, after all. But his meaning was clear as could be. Trump has repeatedly accused Barack Obama of wiretapping his phones, and Comey explained there is “no information that supports” the claim.

I’ve previously argued that not every untruth deserves to be branded with the L-word, because it implies intent and somebody can state an untruth without doing so knowingly. George W. Bush didn’t lie when he said Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, and Obama didn’t lie when he said people who liked their current health insurance could keep it. They made careless statements that proved false (and they deserved much of the criticism they got).

But the current president of the United States lies. He lies in ways that no American politician ever has before. He has lied about — among many other things — Obama’s birthplace, John F. Kennedy’s assassinationSept. 11, the Iraq WarISISNATO, military veterans, Mexican immigrants, Muslim immigrants, anti-Semitic attacks, the unemployment rate, the murder rate, the Electoral Collegevoter fraud and his groping of women.

He tells so many untruths that it’s time to leave behind the textual parsing over which are unwitting and which are deliberate — as well as the condescending notion that most of Trump’s supporters enjoy his lies.

Trump sets out to deceive people. As he has put it, “I play to people’s fantasies.”

Caveat emptor: When Donald Trump says something happened, it should not change anyone’s estimation of whether the event actually happened. Maybe it did, maybe it didn’t. His claim doesn’t change the odds.

Which brings us to Russia.

Russia’s interference in the 2016 presidential campaign was an attack on the United States. It’s the kind of national-security matter that a president and members of Congress swear to treat with utmost seriousness when they take the oath of office. Yet now it has become the subject of an escalating series of lies by the president and the people who work for him.

As Comey was acknowledging on Monday that the F.B.I. was investigating possible collusion between Russia and the Trump campaign, Trump was lying about it. From both his personal Twitter account and the White House account, he told untruths.

Bye bye Trump and all your corruption.  This Russian issue will not be one that will just go away.  The web of Russian corruption in our election and with appointed  government officials is obviously well-entrenched.    It will be rooted out and destroyed.  The American people will not tolerate their filth in our democracy.

Trump has a history of telling audacious lies, time and time again.   He  staged  this revelation by setting up the notion of “fake news” with people who apparently cannot think for themselves.   His plot will all unravel.  When the American safeguards finish with Trump and his lies, Watergate will look like a Sunday school picnic.

There should be no partisan camps.  Our very country is at risk.

Further Reading

 

6 Thoughts to “David Leonhart: All the president’s lies”

  1. Robin Hood

    The fake news has come from Faux News, Russia, Trump Tower and now the White House. “Sad!”

  2. Kelly_3406

    Truth has been a casualty of the current times.

    The most interesting statement made by Comey yesterday was that there was no evidence that Russia supplied Podesta’s emails to Wikileaks. Since the leak of these damaging emails was supposed to be the smoking gun of Russian collusion to defeat Hillary, Comey’s statement significantly reduces the likely scope of any Russian meddling in the election.

    If truth was really a priority, this revelation would have made huge headlines.

    1. So who do you think supplied emails to Wikileaks? I believe that he did say that there WAS proof that the Russians hacked into the DNC. Does it really matter who leaked them once the Russians got them?

      Trump as lied so much I don’t see how you can deny it.

      1. Elena

        what Comey said was that, as is Russia’s modus operandi, they use a middle man to be the goods delivery guy. What part does Kelly not get that unequivocally Russia did indeed interfere with our election in hopes of destabilizing the integrity of our election. AND they WILL do it again.

        MoonHowler,

      2. Jerome Doublas

        MoonHowler,

        I think that the term ‘hacked’ is not being used correctly in the context of Podest’s email. Podesta is an absolute incompetent moron of the highest caliber. He freely provided his passwords in a phishing scheme. That is like giving a guy in a ski mask the keys to your house as you leave for vacation.

        The DNC email leaks were a different matter and at this point I don’t think that it could be considered ‘hacking’ let alone done by the Russians. All of those email, which resulted in DWS having to resign in disgrace and exposed Donna Brazile for feeding Clinton debate questions, were pulled off of the DNC server.

        Who is saying that the Russians hacked the DNC server? The DNC is and that is about it. The funny thing is the DNC refused to turn over the server to the FBI so that they could perform a forensic cyber analysis of the machine. Why?

        What the DNC doesn’t tell you is the story of the Awan family and how they had access to not only DNC email and passwords (including DWS’s iPad she used for official DNC business) but also had them for DOZENS of other high ranking Democrats in the House and Senate. In early February they were caught red handed transmitting tons of Democrat politicians documents and other data to an external, unauthorized server and were then fired and are currently under investigation.

        They are the prime suspects in not only the DNC email leaks but potentially leaks for every one of the Democrats that they worked for that have yet to comes out. The scope of the information that they stole and sent to external severs is not quite known yet but it could be enormous.

  3. I would like to discuss the real issue here–we have a president who lies when telling the truth would be easier. What’s going to happen when there is a crisis of some sort and he needs to communicate to the American people? No one believes him because of his propensity towards lying.

    I remember when people had a fit over Clinton lying about who he slept with (don’t most people?) I am concerned when a president tells dozens of lies daily and doesn’t seem to care. He is so egotistical that he doesn’t understand that we all know he is lying.

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