Lies, damned lies and then there’s Trump

Oct 14

We have heard plenty of lies, hatred and idiocy from politicians in our lifetimes—we hippies, we protestors, we peaceniks, we bra-burners, we queers, we tree-huggers.

We have heard President Lyndon Johnson declare that, in Vietnam, “The enemy has been defeated in battle after battle.”

We have heard Gov. George Wallace proclaim: “it is in the best interest of Negro and white to have a separate education and social order."

We have heard President Richard Nixon declare after Watergate: “I can say categorically that … no one in the White House staff, no one in this administration, presently employed, was involved in this very bizarre incident

We have heard President Ronald Reagan declare: “Trees cause more pollution than automobiles do.”

We have heard President George W. Bush announce: “The Iraqi regime possesses biological and chemical weapons.”

These were all terrible lies that had horrible consequences.

But Donald Trump is something different in the history of our country. He lies with a frequency and regularity that makes even the craven, irresponsible, mostly venal American leaders quoted above seem tame.

I suggested in a video on this website that Donald Trump is one of “history’s most notorious liars”—who lies as frequently and as shamelessly as a Stalin or Hitler.

News organizations, as we know, have documented many thousands of the lies presidential-candidate Trump, President Trump and presidential-candidate-again Trump has told.

But we shouldn’t let their astounding ubiquity inure us to the harm each of these many thousands of untruths have done not only to groups and individuals but to public discourse and the political process in the United States.

Compulsive liars lie, as we have learned, not only to benefit themselves and their causes but to make it seem as if everyone lies, as if there is no such thing as truth.

Here is a handful—a tiny selection—not of Donald Trump’s most outrageous and distractive lies but of Donald Trump’s recent lies. These are among the numerous falsehoods that have been gathered by the Poynter Institute’s Politifact.

I urge you to keep up with their ongoing collection.

· Sept. 30, 2024 in a press conference in Georgia: Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp was calling President Joe Biden after Hurricane Helene but "hasn't been able to get him.”

· Sept. 29, 2024 in a rally in Erie, Pa: Kamala Harris "let in the 13,099 convicted murderers and opposes all efforts to find them and to remove them."

· Sept. 29, 2024 in a rally in Erie, Pa: Vice President Kamala Harris “even wants to legalize fentanyl.”

· Sept. 13, 2024 in a rally in Las Vegas: Vice President Kamala Harris is “talking about bringing back the draft.”

· Aug. 30, 2024 in an interview at a Moms for Liberty Conference: “The transgender thing is incredible ... your kid goes to school and comes home a few days later with an operation. The school decides what’s going to happen with your child."

Mitchell Stephens

Mitchell Stephens, one of the editors of this site, is a professor emeritus of Journalism at New York University, and is the author or co-author of nine books, including the rise of the image the fall of the word, A History of News, Imagine There’s No Heaven: How Atheism Helped Create the Modern World, Beyond News: The Future of Journalism, and The Voice of America: Lowell Thomas and the Invention of 20th Century Journalism. He lives in New York and spends a lot of time traveling and fiddling with video.