President Trump may be most memorable for his lies
For those who occasionally have dared me to say something nice about President Donald Trump, here you go: His first — and, I pray, only — term in office has taught me a lot.
The lessons began with Sean Spicer’s blistering insistence as the new president’s press secretary that the inauguration had brought out “the largest audience ever to witness an inauguration, period, both in person and around the globe.”
The lie was laughably false, as anyone with vision could see by comparing his crowd with those of former presidents, particularly Barack Obama and Lyndon Johnson.
But I was one of many who could not laugh at the sense of menace in this bizarre announcement. The lesson confirmed repeatedly over the years has been that, to this president, the blatant obviousness of the lies doesn’t matter as much as how many people let him get away with them and actually become his enablers.
All presidents lie from time to time, Trump supporters have assured me, a reality from which I take no comfort. Some like to bring up as an example, “If you like your health plan, you can keep it.” That was Obama’s often-repeated promise about his proposed health care plan, quickly rebranded by Republican critics as “Obamacare.”
Actually, most of us were able to keep our health plans, if they offered enough coverage to meet the Affordable Care Act’s standards. But that’s not easy to squeeze into a catchy bumper sticker.
Still, we can only wish that President Trump’s lies were as easy to count on one hand. Instead they have been so frequent that The Washington Post’s Fact Checker keeps a running tally of “false or misleading claims” — by the end of August it topped 22,247 claims in 1,316 days.
More significant than the number of falsehoods or exaggerations is how easily he has gotten away with them. He dismisses media corrections as “fake news,” which tickles his base, the one group to which he gives top priority.
Previous presidents tended to campaign in the fashion President Richard Nixon reportedly described as “run to the right” in the primary campaigns then “run to the center” in the general election to pick up independent swing voters and moderate Democrats.
Trump, a newcomer to elective office but an old hand at salesmanship, broke that mold. He continued to run to the right during the 2016 campaign, reading and reassuring his base at every turn. That strategy won him 2.9 million fewer votes than Hillary Clinton received, but enough votes in the Electoral College to win the White House — and rub it in the faces of anyone who didn’t vote for him.
...continued
(c) 2020 CLARENCE PAGE DISTRIBUTED BY TRIBUNE MEDIA SERVICES, INC.
