Sobering sentence I read in an article in today's newspaper.

[Tommy_Carcetti]

The piece was an article on the ongoing problem of false “news” being spread over the internet. It was a news piece (by the AP) and not an op-ed.

The sentence that got me read:

“President Donald Trump, who often makes remarks that aren’t true, regularly accuses media organizations of making up news he doesn’t like.”

Forget the name for a second. And put aside the dance around the cold hard word “lie” for a second.

That’s still astonishing—that the fact a supposed President has no regard whatsoever for the truth, is an objective and well-supported fact.

And not just “sometimes.”

Not just ”occasionally”.

“Often.”

What a dark time for this country and the Office of the Presidency.

[RKP5637]

1. tRump, is a SH**stain on the history of America! n/t

[Scarsdale]

3. Will the gop ever

realize that what he is doing is a poor reflection on them for cow-towing to his "leadership"? He is a REPUBLICAN and history will record that. Low life, crook, liar, cheat, low I.Q., loser. Not a single presidential trait to be had. This is what the gop admires, I guess.

[RKP5637]

5. To me, I think a lot of the GOP is just like him. The difference is he says it out loud, while the

others hide it and quietly stab everyone in the back as best they can. I really think tRump is the poster child for the GOP, really, I mean that. He represents GOP values.

[johnnyfins]

10. they totally realize

It goes something like:

"We don't necessarily agree on all things, but we took all this Russian money so obstruction."

[DemocracyMouse]

35. What is ALWAYS missing is criticism of the Republican party for supporting this liar.

What the AP ought to ALSO say is this:

"The Republican party largely supports Donald Trump, who often makes remarks that aren’t true. They have officially endorsed lying as a new departure from American traditional values. In a weird flip flop, the Democrats have now become the new vanguard of both progress and traditional values of honesty and decency."

[lagomorph777]

37. "In a weird flip flop, the Democrats have [become] vanguard of...progress and...honesty..."

A weird flip-flop? That is how it's been for my whole life, and I'm old.

[DemocracyMouse]

40. Well, in the rhetoric hall-of-mirrors...

Republicans are called "conservative" and have "traditional values" while Dems are "liberals" .... Dems indeed have stood for decency all around, but our tongues have not yet been able to stop using those tired and patently untrue labels.

We should all stop saying "liberal vs conservative" and talk about "rational vs irrational" and "corrupt vs decent." In those terms the Democrats are indeed what they've always been in recent memory the "decent and rational" party. The Rs? "Irrational and corrupt."

[ProudLib72]

2. He tells "blue lies" which are meant solely for his base

[lark]

4. I fear we are in 1939 Germany and the worst is yet to come.

[RKP5637]

6. I see/feel a lot of similarity. He's playing the Hitler playbook IMO. ... and with

Putin's assistance IMO. tRump knows how easily led many Americans are for whatever reasons, and he pushing all of their buttons for support of him.
I do fear this country could fall into something akin to 1939 Germany. These are the most scary times I've ever lived in this country. There is just so much entranced division and a lot of wackos.

[FakeNoose]

15. No, not really - the German news media would have never questioned Hitler

They would have never called him a liar. Our news media is - finally - done with pretending. They aren't dancing around it any more. Chump is a recognized and acknowledged liar and there's no more pretense. The curtain is coming down on Chump, and rather quickly too.

[lagomorph777]

38. I guess you missed the glowing U.S. TV coverage of Trump's D-Day beach head.

[Initech]

26. I fear that Christian conservative Trumpsters may go full SS if they're not stopped.

[uponit7771]

31. Hitler with nukes sucks

[erronis]

7. It's become the norm. Pretty soon we'll be amazed if a repuglicon tells a truth

and even they they'll have to say that we misinterpreted what they said.

Or if that ahole peeResident says it - on tape, he'll deny it.

Truth is to be feared.

[Pepsidog]

8. More accurate would be "rarely tells the truth". He lies a lot more than "often".

[Gore1FL]

9. I think the word should be "consistently."

"Often" seems weak.

[calimary]

11. Color me Sick-of-It.

Just saw Jim Acosta in CNN trip all over himself on Brian Stelter’s media analysis show, STILL trying to give trump the benefit of the doubt.

For Pete’s sake! trump squandered that good will a LOOOOOOOOONNNNNNG time ago! They’re still struggling with calling his constant lying what it is: LYING.

[irisblue]

12. Recent WaPo

Sourcehttps://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/lies-the-news-media-is-starting-to-describe-trumps-falsehoods-that-way/2019/06/05/413cc2a0-8626-11e9-a491-25df61c78dc4_story.html

snip-"This will not come as a revelation to people who have closely followed President Trump’s public statements and Twitter feed and have long doubted his veracity. It is, instead, a late-dawning recognition by mainstream news organizations, which until fairly recently shied away from branding the president’s many questionable utterances as outright lies."

snip--"As recently as last summer, a debate still raged within newsrooms: Could a presidential statement, no matter how blatantly false, be deemed a “lie” since, by definition, the word implies awareness of falsity and intent to deceive? How can journalists know what’s in Trump’s mind, even when he repeatedly says transparently untrue things, such as “the wall is under construction right now” on the southern border with Mexico, or that the United States pays “a disproportionate share” of the cost of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO)?

This dictionary definition of “lie” still keeps some media organizations from applying it to Trump. "

snip--"One of the first mainstream journalists to systematically brand Trump’s comments as lies was Daniel Dale, the Toronto Star’s Washington bureau chief. Dale, who this week joined CNN as a reporter on the fact-checking beat, began compiling a database in 2015 and started counting the false statements the following year. He uses the word “lie” frequently, and he freely refers to Trump as a “serial liar.”

“I think both are objectively true,” Dale says. “It isn’t a departure from objective journalism to use these words. . . . Why should the rules of objective journalism mean we have to dance around the obvious, objective truth? If we’re going to get readers to trust us, we have to be straight with them.”

(Much more at article, if you are paywalled out, try hidden/incognito mode to read it.)

While the WaPo writer is somewhat cautious, IMO, the twitters that discussed this the day of the WaPo publication were much more clear about the failure of the American News Media.

[Demovictory9]

27. rightwing nutcase Dennis Prager "so he exaggerates" The ends justify the means.

they love his straight forward bigotry - that matters above all else

[Honeycombe8]

13. Yes. The Republicans have lost credibility permanently.

They no longer have any place to criticize others ... for anything. Even corruption.

[FakeNoose]

14. The Associated Press is calling Chump a liar - finally!

This is to be celebrated. They aren't dancing around it any more. Why did they enable him for so long?

[kstewart33]

17. Yes a very big deal given that AP stories appear in over 1,300 newspapers in the US and abroad.

[Shoonra]

16. We have reached a state ....

We've reached a state where even reputable, carefully worded and edited, daily newspapers are calling Pres. Trump a liar, no equivocation, no subtlety ... and clearly no worry that any readers would object to such a slur on the President.

In other words, it's as if (or it's an indicator that) the whole country agrees that our President is a compulsive liar.

That's how bad it's gotten.

[The Blue Flower]

18. Jimmy Carter when campaigning for pres promised he'd 'never lie' to us

He won because the country was fed up to the gills with Nixon's lies.

[Rhiannon12866]

21. And after that, the press dissected every statement he made looking for the smallest violation

He worked hard to make peace with the press, but except for a brief "honeymoon period," he was never successful. He addresses this in his autobiography.

[onetexan]

29. We are in one of those periods in time

But im confident Demswill take back the Executive next year. Every sensible americsn is sick of this national embarrassment.

[sop]

19. "Trumpery" as traditionally defined by Webster's Dictionary:

"deceit, fraud, anything calculated to deceive by false show, showy but worthless, trashy."

"Trompe" in French means: "to deceive, cheat, fool, delude, betray or mislead."

And thanks to Trump, after only a couple of years in office the word "Trumpery" has now become a part of our national lexicon.

From the Urban Dictionary: "political smears, bait and switch tactics, demagoguery, deflection, namecalling, political shell games, blameshifting, threats, fearmongering and any side show-con man methods to try to shield oneself from prosecution as a traitor, criminal, liar, fool, madman, and/or imbecile."

Don't say we weren't warned when Grandfather Drumpf changed the family name to Trump.

[lagomorph777]

39. Never before was there such a perfectly named politician.

[Jim__]

20. "... if we hear enough lies, then we no longer recognize the truth at all."

That quote is attributed to Valery Legasov in the Chenobyl TV series. That's the type of damage that Trump is doing to the US.

[grantcart]

22. You can fool some of the people all of the time and all of the people some of the time

But you can't fool all of the people all of the time

I put my money on Lincoln

[Tommy_Carcetti]

36. Another great line:

“Every lie we tell incurs a debt to the truth. Sooner or later, the debt is paid.”

An absolutely phenomenal series.

Literally one of the greatest things I have ever seen on TV.

[Jim__]

41. I agree, a great series.

One thing that it made me understand is that the constant lying is exhausting and, eventually, people stop trying to discern what's true and what isn't.

[BigmanPigman]

23. This will happen again unless we somehow destroy Fux Ruse!

Even Obama said that is our biggest obstacle after the last election rip off.

[BlueJac]

24. K&R

[Laura PourMeADrink]

25. Impeach

[srobertss]

28. Prince of Lies

You’d think that phrase would give pause to his evangelical supporters.

[wasupaloopa]

30. I often have wondered why any media company would show video of him. Every word is a lie

so what news value is it? The same goes for his tweets.

[Sherman A1]

33. Agreed

They should have all boycotted him from day one. However, it is all about the money with our Breathless 24/7 Breaking News Infotainment Cable Noise Media so they feed off what is outrageous in order to keep your eyes on the screen between ads for drugs we never knew we needed.

[Sherman A1]

32. If his lips are moving

He is lying. It is all the man knows.

[oldsoftie]

34. But this was known BEFORE he was elected