Dishonesty is the defining characteristics of Trump and his administration, and lies are a daily occurrence. While there are far too many lies to track, I thought a thread dedicated to the worst and most notable lies would be useful. There’s a lot of material to choose from.
(I could have tapped into a rich vein of lies simply by linking to Trump’s Truth Social account — hence the OP title.)
For the same reason (namely that what passes for news in the US is on the crap end of the spectrum), critical thinking and media literacy are severely lacking in USA.
Allan Miller appears to be in disbelief that colewd could be this obtuse. I have a much longer experience of interaction with Americans on media matters and I say that the lunacy that we see in colewd is the expected default state in an average American. This includes even educated Americans. For example petrushka has kept asking me all this year how I find news and information about events in USA. I’m half a globe away and I know better what is going on in his country than he does. It is no news to me that Americans are this obtuse. They just are. And the obtuseness is further amplified by their superiority complex.
I ran across a clip of Lesley Stahl interviewing Trump in 2020, shortly before the election. It’s telling.
Trump:
Stahl:
Trump:
Stahl:
Trump:
Stahl:
Trump constantly lies about the media. Bill is playing dumb, but I suspect even he recognizes that.
And you know this because you are a prime example of critical thinking. Of course, so is keiths, who often disagrees with you. How can this be?
“Critical thinking” ought to mean something more or less definite, but I think it’s less rather than more. To begin, you need to have most of the relevant facts to work with. And how many is “most” and where are the borders of “relevant”? People who dedicate their entire lives to gleaning and cross-referencing and constructing coherent realities from this, unfortunately disagree pretty wildly. Where have your facts been selected – what are your sources? It has been said (correctly) that for $500 a day, a party to a legal case can hire a qualified expert for their side.
Then, armed with all of these facts, none of which are subject to any debate by knowledgeable people, you need to assemble them into a coherent picture no right-thinking person could doubt. But that’s easy – anyone who doubts you isn’t right-thinking and can be disregarded because they failed to marshal all the facts or think critically or whatever.
keiths seems to believe that any claim is either true or false, and critical thinking can make this determination. Problem is, at best in the real world almost any claim is sometimes right, or partially right, or mostly right, or sincerely believed to be right, or aspirational but indeterminate. We mock Bill for his inability to reject his hero on the merits, due to his inability to know what the merits are. Is the nation worse off under Trump? Good question. We can probably identify who is better off and who is worse off fairly accurately. But is the net result a Good Thing? In politics, the old saying is “where you sit is where you stand.” In politics there are no ill winds – all winds blow somebody good.
I can kind of understand where Bill is coming from. Yeah, the Washington Post identified over 30,000 false statements. Maybe the Post is weighing with a liberal scales, but maybe the focus should be on the net economic, social, political, and cultural impact of the Trump administration. And the important question isn’t whether Trump lied this time or that time, but rather how people generally feel about what’s happening. This is what elections are for.
Flint:
It depends on your standards, your skills, and your honesty. Someone who simply assumes that “anyone who doubts me isn’t right-thinking” is making a mistake.
No, for at least three reasons:
1. Many claims are subjective. I say the Grateful Dead were overrated, but Deadheads obviously differ. There’s no way to resolve the question. De gustibus non disputandum.
2. The evidence might be insufficient to make a determination. The person sitting directly behind me in the theater when I saw Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind may or may not have been named Bob. I’ll never know, and critical thinking can’t help me.
3. Some questions are just too difficult. Is the Collatz Conjecture true? It’s definitely either true or false, but I don’t know which and I don’t have the math chops to figure it out. Critical thinking isn’t enough.
If Bill simply said “Yes, Trump is a liar, but I don’t care about honesty,” then there would be nothing to dispute. But Bill actually (at least claims to) care about honesty, and he maintains that Trump isn’t a liar. That’s a false claim, easily disproven.
Yes, by a host of criteria. It’s why historians and scholars have ranked Trump as the worst president of all time. Does everyone agree with those criteria? Of course not. Steve Bannon, for instance, regards Trump as “an instrument of divine providence” and wants him to serve a third term.
It depends on your criteria. We can debate what the criteria should be, and we can debate whether Trump’s presidency qualifies as a Good Thing under any given set of criteria.
Factual claims can be checked. You don’t need to be a liberal to see that Trump is a pathological liar.
The WaPo covers all of those. The database is just one facet of their voluminous Trump coverage, but it’s an important part. Hence its nomination for NYU’s list of the Top Ten Works of Journalism of the Decade.
Trump’s lies have consequences, some of them enormous. They matter. There’s a reason we value honesty in our presidents.
“Most” and “relevant” means whether it forms a critical mass in the society. For example, you elected a fascist dictator into office for a second time! One time could be forgiven as a mistake. You saw the idiot dictator wannabe in the office and now you should know what you are dealing with. But this second time means you saw the idiot dictator wannabe in the office and you liked it. The critical mass of the people wanted him back there. This is what “most” and “relevant” means. America and Americans *are* that.
And the elections were decided by the likes of colewd. All of this is important:
1. Trump lied to deceive voters.
2. The voters put him in office. Again!
3. Not enough voters feel deceived by the lies. Many deny that Trump lied or is lying now.