By Brigitte L. Nacos
When parents tell their children to tell the truth, they may cite the proverb that lies have short legs. The lesson is that you do not get away with lies.
I thought of this, when I reread an article on Donald Trump by Marie Brenner that Vanity Fair published in 1990 and republished in 2015, right after he declared his presidential candidacy.
Brenner wrote that one of Trump’s lawyers told her, “Donald is a believer in the big-lie theory. “If you say something again and again, people will believe you.”
Obviously, the Big-Lie theory has served Donald Trump well before and after he moved into the White House. According to the fact checkers of the Washington Post, President Trump made 16,241 “false or misleading” claims during the first three years in office. In other words, more than an average of 14 lies per day.
And, yet, with TV, radio, and online Trumpian propagandists at his service, Trump disproved the saying that lies have short legs.
During his ascent to and rule as liar-in-chief he has relentlessly attacked the mainstream media as “fake” and “enemy of the American people.”
Anyone who calls himself a “very stable genius” does not allow disagreement when he muddles fact and fiction. Thus, after the premier public health scientist Dr. Anthony Fauci corrected Trump statements during press conferences in the White House, he all but disappeared from that stage. One appearance in the last seven events.
Dr. Deborah Birx, also a recognized public health expert, seems lately being sucked into the Trumpian circle of benevolent servants. In an appearance on “Watter’s World” last Saturday she told the FOX NEWS host that the President “looks at every bit of data” praising his “strong foundation on data” and that he is asking the right questions. When she explained Trump’s insane notion about the internal use of heat and disinfectants in the treatment of Covid-19 as his habit “to talk it through out loud” new information, she must have scored brownie points. Same, when she went after the news media.
Asked whether the media had been fair in reporting the pandemic, Dr. Birx answered forcefully,
I think the media is very slicey and dicey about how they put sentences together in order to create headlines. …I think often the reporting may be accurate in paragraph three, four, and five. But I’m not sure how many people get to paragraph three, four, and five…And I think the responsibility the press has is to really ensure that the headlines reflect science and data that is in the piece itself.”
No criticism of the Big-Lie theorist and his dismal relationship to truth and fact even during the current health emergency. Instead, an admonition of the mainstream media that records his falsities and misleading statements day-in and day-out.
This morning, President Trump threw another tweet bomb in the direction of the mainstream media. “FAKE NEWS, THE ENEMY OF THE PEOPLE!” he wrote. “There has never been, in the history of our Country, a more vicious or hostile Lamestream Media than there is right now, even in the midst of a National Emergency, the Invisible Enemy!”
The White House then informed reporters that the previously scheduled afternoon press briefing would not be held. Another signal that these press conferences are not about informing the public about the health crisis but rather about the president’s vanities.
P.S. A few hours after announcing that the day's press briefing was canceled the White House let it be known that the President would “brief the nation” at a news conference in the afternoon. The stable genius needs the stage and always the starring role.
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