The George Costanza Rule Of Lying
1 hour 56 min ago
MATT GERTZ
... “Jerry, just remember. It's not a lie ... if you believe it” ...
Spicer doesn't want reporters calling him a liar because that would make it impossible to do his job. And he definitely wants to ensure that they don't use that terminology to refer to President Trump. So he used his first press briefing to claim that his statements aren’t lies if he believes them ...
Asked by ABC’s Jonathan Karl whether it is “your intention to always tell the truth from that podium, and will you pledge never to knowingly say something that is nonfactual,” Spicer responded that his “intention is never to lie,” but at times he will unknowingly pass along incomplete or inaccurate information ...
... he was trying to establish the circumstances under which it would be appropriate for journalists to accuse him and others in the Trump administration of lying. Rather than journalists making that assessment based on context -- whether the false statement has been repeated after being disproven, or whether it is so false on its face that it defies other explanations -- he wants them to reserve the term for cases where they can prove the speaker doesn’t believe their words. This is a standard so high as to be virtually impossible to meet ...
https://mediamatters.org/blog/2017/01/24/donald-trump-sean-spicer-and-george-costanza-rule-lying/215108
