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The Most Mendacious President in U.S. History: On Trump, his Twitter lies and why it's getting worse
Susan Glasser column in the New Yorker tonight:
https://www.newyorker.com/news/letter-from-trumps-washington/the-most-mendacious-president-in-us-history
-snipping paragraphs about Trump's Twitter feed having become worse than ever, and why the media shouldn't let Trump distract them into debating whether social media should be regulated-
The fact remains, however, that Trump’s breathtaking dishonesty is and ought to be a national debate in its own right. In a provocative new essay, Trump’s onetime ghostwriter Tony Schwartz—who wrote Trump’s best-selling 1987 book, “The Art of the Deal,” but has since turned on him—argues that the Presidency has transformed Trump from an attention-seeking narcissist, who spent decades lying about his golf trophies, his sex life, and his real-estate properties, into an ends-justify-the-means ruler who has increasingly and ominously escalated his lies and extreme behavior. Many of Trump’s lies, Schwartz argues, come from his grandiose misconception of his own knowledge and powers, including his bragging that he knows more “than anyone” about ISIS, drones, social media, campaign finance, technology, polls, courts, lawsuits, politicians, trade, renewable energy, infrastructure, construction, nuclear weapons, banks, tax laws, the economy, and, during the pandemic, medicine. “His obsession with domination and power have prompted Trump to tell lies more promiscuously than ever since he became President, and to engage in ever more unfounded and aggressive responses aimed at anyone he perceives stands in his way,” Schwartz wrote.
This is also the thesis of a great public service of a book, by the Washington Post’s Fact Checker staff, that will come out next week, “Donald Trump and His Assault on Truth.” The book is not just a compendium of the President’s tens of thousands of falsehoods, misleading claims, and lies during the first three years of his Presidency; it’s also an effort to catalogue and explain the different pathologies at work in his systematic misrepresentations to the American people. The untruths told by the President have increased in seriousness and volume, the Post found: an average of six per day in 2017 turned to nearly sixteen per day in 2018, which then increased to more than twenty-two per day in 2019—and that was before this crazy 2020 of the impeachment trial, the pandemic, the economic crisis, and Trump’s reëlection campaign. The President’s use of Twitter has metastasized along with the false statements that he publishes on his feed; he is now sending out, every day, an average of nearly four times as many misleading tweets as he did during his first year in office.
-snipping paragraphs about Republicans who excuse Trump's tweets even though they admit they don't like them-
Seeing Trump’s falsehoods as foibles is folly. Trump’s lies are a feature, not a bug, of his Presidency and, indeed, of his entire public persona. His promotion of a sinister alternate reality divorced from facts is not an aberration that can be corrected. His misstatements are not mere mistakes. As the Post’s book points out, when called on a lie, Trump not only does not back away from it; he has a tendency to repeat it. In more than four hundred instances, the Post’s fact checkers found, he has repeated the same falsehood at least three times. Joe Scarborough is not even the first person whom Trump has falsely accused of murder since he has been President. Yet, when the White House press secretary, Kayleigh McEnany, was asked on Thursday whether Trump would correct the Twitter errors that led to Twitter’s fact check, she adamantly refused. “His intent is always to give truthful information to the American people,” she said.
The conclusion from all of this is as depressing as it is damning. These are not standard-issue political lies being foisted on the public but nuclear-weapons-grade falsehoods that speak directly to the President’s character. They are of a scale and volume that simply defy precedent, even in a country that had Richard Nixon as its leader. Trump, the Fact Checker’s editor Glenn Kessler writes, is quite simply “the most mendacious President in U.S. history.” There are, sadly, eighteen thousand reasons and counting why he is right.
The fact remains, however, that Trump’s breathtaking dishonesty is and ought to be a national debate in its own right. In a provocative new essay, Trump’s onetime ghostwriter Tony Schwartz—who wrote Trump’s best-selling 1987 book, “The Art of the Deal,” but has since turned on him—argues that the Presidency has transformed Trump from an attention-seeking narcissist, who spent decades lying about his golf trophies, his sex life, and his real-estate properties, into an ends-justify-the-means ruler who has increasingly and ominously escalated his lies and extreme behavior. Many of Trump’s lies, Schwartz argues, come from his grandiose misconception of his own knowledge and powers, including his bragging that he knows more “than anyone” about ISIS, drones, social media, campaign finance, technology, polls, courts, lawsuits, politicians, trade, renewable energy, infrastructure, construction, nuclear weapons, banks, tax laws, the economy, and, during the pandemic, medicine. “His obsession with domination and power have prompted Trump to tell lies more promiscuously than ever since he became President, and to engage in ever more unfounded and aggressive responses aimed at anyone he perceives stands in his way,” Schwartz wrote.
This is also the thesis of a great public service of a book, by the Washington Post’s Fact Checker staff, that will come out next week, “Donald Trump and His Assault on Truth.” The book is not just a compendium of the President’s tens of thousands of falsehoods, misleading claims, and lies during the first three years of his Presidency; it’s also an effort to catalogue and explain the different pathologies at work in his systematic misrepresentations to the American people. The untruths told by the President have increased in seriousness and volume, the Post found: an average of six per day in 2017 turned to nearly sixteen per day in 2018, which then increased to more than twenty-two per day in 2019—and that was before this crazy 2020 of the impeachment trial, the pandemic, the economic crisis, and Trump’s reëlection campaign. The President’s use of Twitter has metastasized along with the false statements that he publishes on his feed; he is now sending out, every day, an average of nearly four times as many misleading tweets as he did during his first year in office.
-snipping paragraphs about Republicans who excuse Trump's tweets even though they admit they don't like them-
Seeing Trump’s falsehoods as foibles is folly. Trump’s lies are a feature, not a bug, of his Presidency and, indeed, of his entire public persona. His promotion of a sinister alternate reality divorced from facts is not an aberration that can be corrected. His misstatements are not mere mistakes. As the Post’s book points out, when called on a lie, Trump not only does not back away from it; he has a tendency to repeat it. In more than four hundred instances, the Post’s fact checkers found, he has repeated the same falsehood at least three times. Joe Scarborough is not even the first person whom Trump has falsely accused of murder since he has been President. Yet, when the White House press secretary, Kayleigh McEnany, was asked on Thursday whether Trump would correct the Twitter errors that led to Twitter’s fact check, she adamantly refused. “His intent is always to give truthful information to the American people,” she said.
The conclusion from all of this is as depressing as it is damning. These are not standard-issue political lies being foisted on the public but nuclear-weapons-grade falsehoods that speak directly to the President’s character. They are of a scale and volume that simply defy precedent, even in a country that had Richard Nixon as its leader. Trump, the Fact Checker’s editor Glenn Kessler writes, is quite simply “the most mendacious President in U.S. history.” There are, sadly, eighteen thousand reasons and counting why he is right.
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