In Lying in Plain Sight along with A Sane World, we made the case in January of 2017 that Trump should always be presumed lying unless proven otherwise. That approach reverses traditional political reporting which treats every statement by major officeholders as truthful, but subject to verification. Now, a year and a half later, most Republican officeholders, with notable exceptions, have steadfastly lined up to support Trump's constant lying.
But just as the mainstream press delayed reporting candidate Trump's constant lying until it was too late, the press has been too reticent, too slow to react appropriately to this pattern of lies.
In WaPo, Paul Waldman writes ii's "Time to stop chasing Trump's lies down the rabbit hole."
His compelling case about Trump's statements:
"These are lies. They’re not “unconfirmed,” they’re not “misstatements,” and they’re not “exaggerations.” They’re lies. They should have been greeted with headlines reading, “President Trump Lies to Public About Russia Investigation.”
How many times do we have to go through this charade?
At this point, Trump has earned the presumption that everything he says on the topic of the Russia investigation is offered in bad faith and is almost certainly false, until proved otherwise. So we should treat his statements the way we do press releases from the North Korean state news agency."
Of course, it's not just every statement on the Russia investigation that is offered in bad faith. Every statement Trump makes, every tweet, is offered in bad faith as the statement which, if true, would benefit Trump's political interest in the very short term, and which, if false, will almost surely be superseded by a statement that follows the same pattern:
offered in bad faith as the statement which, if true, would benefit Trump's political interest in the very short term, and which, if false, will almost surely be superseded by a statement
offered in bad faith as the statement which, if true, would benefit Trump's political interest in the very short term, and which, if false, will almost surely be superseded by a statement
offered in bad faith as the statement which, if true, would benefit Trump's political interest in the very short term, and which, if false, will almost surely be superseded by a statement
...
This endless pattern of tactical false statements has led us to a situation where Trumpworld needs to support a convoluted and elaborate web of claims that is materially false in many quite major ways. In this world, not only is Hillary Clinton a criminal who should be "locked up", but lifelong Republicans like Andrew McCabe and James Comey at the FBI, and Robert Mueller, all of whom have a long history as "straight shooters", are depicted as part of a "deep state" conspiracy against Trump, or "really Democrats." And these generally trustworthy and upright citizens are not to be trusted, but the Trumpians, who lie all the time, are to be trusted.
In an important larger sense, either the narrative expressed by Democrats (and many out-of-office Republicans) is correct and serious investigation into Team Trump is necessary, or Team Trump is correct. There is no middle ground where the truth could sit. But the long series of "refutations" offered by Team Trump needs to be considered in its totality, where the gross logical inconsistencies become painfully obvious, not in isolation based on the most recent dubious claim or two.
For example, consider the Sean Spicer statement that "If the President puts Russian salad dressing on his salad tonight, somehow that's a Russia connection" at a March 28, 2017 briefing. Think today, only a year later, now that an incredible number of sketchy Russia connections (in 2016 and ongoing) have been uncovered, just how preposterous that Spicer denial was. And yet CNN reporting at that time referred to an "exasperated" Spicer, based solely on his posturing, thus conferring implicit credibility to the Trump team denials.
The mainstream press has a really tough time with this situation. As another example, the press takes shortcuts that would generally work with an honest president, but have no place here, reporting that "Trump believes..", "Trump thinks..." etc. But if he is lying all the time, we do not have any idea what he believes. Not only do we never know for sure what anyone believes, in Trump's case, we know for sure that we do not know what he actually believes, and we have good reason to believe that what he is saying at any given time is not true and is likely misleading. So whenever the press reports that "Trump believes X", they are lending credence to Trump that he does not deserve based on his well established patterns of behavior.
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