In a Swirl of Untruths and Falsehoods, Calling a Lie a Lie

[elleng]

'Words matter.

And from the moment he became president, Donald J. Trump has unleashed so many of consequence that the public has barely had time to parse their full implication. Words about the dishonest media, the end of Obamacare, the construction of that border wall with Mexico — this is an abbreviated list, and he hasn’t even completed his first week in office.

Amid the verbal deluge, President Trump this week repeated an assertion he made shortly after his election: that millions of ballots cast illegally by undocumented immigrants cost him the popular vote. If true, this would suggest the wholesale corruption of American democracy.

Not to worry: As far as anyone knows, the president’s assertion is akin to saying that millions of unicorns also voted illegally.

But such a baseless statement by a president challenged the news media to find the precise words to describe it. This will be a recurring challenge, given President Trump’s habit of speaking in sales-pitch hyperbole and his tendency to deride any less-than-flattering report as “fake news.”'>>>

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/25/business/media/donald-trump-lie-media.html?_r=0

[guillaumeb]

1. Recommended, but there are other factors to consider:

From the article:

Rarely are these words, each with its own nuance, applied directly to something said by a president, though others have also dissembled (like Bill Clinton on whether he had sex with an intern). “This is the very unique situation that we find ourselves in as journalists and as a country,” said Joshua Benton, the director of the Nieman Journalism Lab at Harvard University. “We have an administration that seems to be asserting a right to its own facts and doesn’t seem to be able to produce evidence to back those claims.”

There are a certain number of Trump voters who believe Trump's lies because Trump's lies confirm what these Trump voters already feel. Trump, like most good con men, knows what his audience wishes to hear. We, the posters at DU, are not that audience, but Trump is not speaking to us.

Plus, since the 1960s, the GOP has been promoting the "liberal media bias" meme and a certain number of conservatives believe that the corporate media is liberal.

[elleng]

2. Got it.

Recall which repug, in recent history, said something like they have their OWN facts??? Cheney???

[guillaumeb]

3. I believe that it was Ari Fleischer who atlked about creating reality.

Frank Luntz also knows about creating reality.

[elleng]

4. Right, creating their own reality!