All the Lying

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Abby Zimet, Further columnist 

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Sharpiegate. Getty Image

Finally. After over 20,000 lies during his 174 years besmirching the office, a patriot and real live journalist went to the duplicitous belly of the beast during its daily hate speech, soon after some slimy birther crap about Kamala Harris. 

"Mr. President," asked HuffPost White House correspondent S.V. Dáte, "after three and a half years, do you regret at all, all the lying you’ve done to the American people?” Trump, dazed and confused: “All the what?” Dáte, cool as truth: “All the lying, all the dishonesty.” Trump, deer in the headlights: “Who has done?” 

Dáte, very calmly: “You have done...Tens of thousands...." Trump paused, stuttered, quickly moved on to another reporter, who unforgivably obliged him by asking some escape-hatch question about payroll taxes. Really?!? When WaPo fact-checkers had to create the new category Bottomless Pinocchios, beyond Four Pinocchios - no other politician has qualified but he's got 14 so far, nobody's ever seen anything like it - because   #TrumpLiesEverytimeHeSpeaks   and #TrumpLiesAmericansDie? The Bottomless Pinocchios were born last month, on a day when Trump made 62 false claims, about half in an interview with bestie Sean Hannity; by then, he'd also spewed over 1,000 untruths about coronavirus.

For years, the lies have horrified Dáte, an Indian-American journalist who long worked in Florida after graduating from Stanford, also runs NPR's Washington desk, and cites the just-the-facts training that makes many journalists leery of the "l" word to denote an untruth that can be "an exaggeration. Or a random fabrication. Or a dramatic embellishment. Or a deliberate lie." Whatever: It's "astonishing" that any time "the president of the United States opens his mouth, odds are that the words that tumble forth are false." In a lengthy January piece about the corrosive effect of Trump's lies, Dáte describes justone day's lies - about Miss Ukraine, the economy, the wall, trade, Pelosi, fictional new auto plants - to note that, over 33 years covering Congress, NASA, city halls, criminal courts, he's never met anyone who lies so much. This, he predicts, will be Trump's place in history books: "The impeached president who made up the most stuff, pretty much all day, pretty much every day." Because the White House press corps has been complicit, Dáte argues, "If truth is to win post-Trump, it will have to be the American public that makes it so....Average citizens (will) have to decide that lying is unacceptable in our governance." And because after his moment of truth-telling he'll likely never be seen, gulag-style, in the White House again, his colleagues will have to grow a spine. It's way past due.

eceived rapturously by the liberal crowd. “In those 10 secon ..

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http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/77536265.cms?utm_source=contentofinterest&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=cpps impeached president who made up the most stuff, pretty much all day, pretty much every da

  https://www.commondreams.org/further/2020/08/13/all-lying-2