NYT: Donald Trump Is Lying in Plain Sight

[BumRushDaShow]

Donald Trump Is Lying in Plain Sight

Charles M. Blow SEPT. 8, 2016


It has generally been my experience that when people pepper their speech with the phrase “believe me,” they are not to be believed. The default position among people of honor — the silent agreement between speaker and listener — is one of truth and trust. But Donald Trump is not a person of honor. Presidents lie. Politicians lie. People lie. But Trump lies with a ferocious abandon.

For instance, the fact-checking website PolitiFact found that of the statements by Hillary Clinton that it checked, 22 percent were completely “true” and another 28 percent were “mostly true.” But Trump is another animal. There is no true equivalency between Trump and Clinton, or between Trump and any other politician, for that matter. Only 4 percent of Trump’s statements that PolitiFact checked were rated as completely “true” and only another 11 percent were even rated as “mostly true.” Seventy percent of Trump’s statements that the site checked were rated as “mostly false,” “false” or “pants on fire,” the site’s worse rating. The truth shifts beneath Trump like sand. He has no regard for the firmness of fact. For him, fact is as pliant as that Play-Doh he handed out to flood victims in Louisiana.

Indeed, PoltiFact named Trump’s collective “campaign misstatements” the 2015 Lie of the Year, writing: “It’s the trope on Trump: He’s authentic, a straight-talker, less scripted than traditional politicians. That’s because Donald Trump doesn’t let facts slow him down. Bending the truth or being unhampered by accuracy is a strategy he has followed for years.”

The site quotes from Trump’s book “The Art of the Deal,” in which he says, “People want to believe that something is the biggest and the greatest and the most spectacular. I call it truthful hyperbole. It’s an innocent form of exaggeration — and a very effective form of promotion.” In fact, Tony Schwartz was the ghostwriter for that book and in July he blasted Trump in an interview in The New Yorker: “Schwartz says of Trump, ‘He lied strategically. He had a complete lack of conscience about it.’ Since most people are ‘constrained by the truth,’ Trump’s indifference to it ‘gave him a strange advantage.’”

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/08/opinion/donald-trump-is-lying-in-plain-sight.html?ref=opinion

Whole lot more to this editorial and Blow hits it outta the park!

[Jerry442]

1. At some point you have to ask yourself...

...is the fecklessness of the media re Donald Trump's truthfulness a character flaw? Or is it the manifestation of an orchestrated campaign designed to put Trump in the White House?

[BumRushDaShow]

2. For some reason it seems

like it along the lines of what others have posted as the comment from Dana Bash -

Dana Bash said, “I think the stakes are much higher in this debate and all the debates for Hillary Clinton because the expectations are higher for her because she’s a seasoned politician. She’s a seasoned debater. You know, yes we saw Donald Trump in the primaries debate for the first time, but he is a first-time politician. So um, for lots of reasons. Maybe it’s not fair, but that’s the way it is. The onus is on her.”

http://www.politicususa.com/2016/09/06/truth-cnn-admits-easy-donald-trump.html

Blow basically says the same thing in his editorial -

I believe that this is in large part because we, an irresponsible media, have built a false equivalency in which the choice between Clinton and Trump seems to have equally bad implications, because we have framed it as a choice between a liar and a lunatic. But this obscures the fact that the lunatic is also a pathological liar of a kind and quality that we have not seen in recent presidential politics and perhaps ever.

Trump is in a category all his own.

Part of the reason for Clinton’s problems is that she is being held to a traditional level of honesty and integrity, as she should be.

But Trump is being held to a wholly different, more flexible standard. When he takes a different position over years or months or days or even hours, that is not simply an innocent evolution, but a flat-out lie.

[KewlKat]

3. How To Catch a Liar

Interrogation specialist Stan Walters listens for telltale phrases that suggest his subject is working overtime to appear credible. When someone emphasizes a statement by saying, “Honestly,” “Believe me,” “Frankly,” “Trust me,” “You’re not going to believe this,” or “Why would I lie?” he’s telling you that he doesn’t really believe his own words.

And remember that truth-telling often looks messier than lying. “When you’re talking to someone and you realize you’ve said something that wasn’t quite right, you’ll go back and fix it. That’s what people do when they’re telling the truth,” says UC–Santa Barbara’s Bella DePaulo, who studies the psychology of lying. “When people are lying, they’re worried that those kinds of admissions will give it away. They’re reluctant to say, ‘Oh, wait, let me correct that.'” On the contrary, liars will often stick to a well-rehearsed pattern designed to impress you with competence while distracting from unsavory details.



SOURCE: https://etelkawrites.com/lehoczky-liar/

[BumRushDaShow]

4. And then pathological liars

double and triple down on their lies when caught and they learn how to deflect call-out to some other subject.

[Botany]

5. Trump, "People are going to vote 10 times."

Believe me

I have been doing election protection work for 12 years and people can not vote
more then once but that does not stop Trump from just making crap up that is just not true.

http://thehill.com/blogs/ballot-box/290203-trump-warns-of-voter-fraud-people-are-going-to-vote-10-times

[Stuart G]

6. k and r....excellent post..explains this in clear and honest way..