By Julie Hirschfeld Davis and Maggie Haberman
WASHINGTON — As a candidate, Donald J. Trump claimed that the United States government had known in advance about the Sept. 11 attacks. He hinted that Antonin Scalia, a Supreme Court justice who died in his sleep two years ago, had been murdered. And for years, Mr. Trump pushed the notion that President Barack Obama had been born in Kenya rather than Honolulu, making him ineligible for the presidency.
None of that was true.
Last week, President Trump promoted new, unconfirmed accusations to suit his political narrative: that a “criminal deep state” element within Mr. Obama’s government planted a spy deep inside his presidential campaign to help his rival, Hillary Clinton, win — a scheme he branded “Spygate.” It was the latest indication that a president who has for decades trafficked in conspiracy theories has brought them from the fringes of public discourse to the Oval Office.
Now that he is president, Mr. Trump’s baseless stories of secret plots by powerful interests appear to be having a distinct effect. Among critics, they have fanned fears that he is eroding public trust in institutions, undermining the idea of objective truth and sowing widespread suspicions about the government and news media that mirror his own.
“The effect on the life of the nation of a president inventing conspiracy theories in order to distract attention from legitimate investigations or other things he dislikes is corrosive,” said Jon Meacham, a presidential historian and biographer. “The diabolical brilliance of the Trump strategy of disinformation is that many people are simply going to hear the charges and countercharges, and decide that there must be something to them because the president of the United States is saying them.””
David Lindsay: Yes, he lies on purpose, and the counrtry is in trouble, mostly because other Republicans are supporting his lies, which is more criminal behavior.
Here are the top two comments, I enjoyed:
ChristineMcM
Massachusetts1h ago
“”He’s the blame shifter in chief…It goes to this idea that you can’t believe anything that you read or see. He has sold us a whole way of accepting a narrative that has so many layers of unaccountable, unsubstantiated content that you can’t possibly peel it all back.””
I found this analysis, and the above quote from Glenda Blair, extremely frightening. Particularly the fact that “kook” thinking is being branded with the authority of the US presidency.
I keep wondering if Trump actually believes all this tripe or if he’s merely deliberately conning us. Some in his administration say the president lies so often he starts believing his own fantasies.
Deep down, however, I don’t buy it–for me, it’s clearly a con to divert. The fact he so good at it, makes it worse. Add to that,the lack of push-back from Congress–and the enthusiastic support from the Devin Nunes crowd– build on a deliberate strategy to kill the Russia investigation.
The world must look at us and think the US has gone bonkers.
It reminds me of all those post-World War II war novels describing the unsettling feeling residents of totalitarian states have when reality conflicts with government propaganda.
I look at it and wonder where it will all end? More important, will it end?
7 Replies 231 Recommended
Socrates commented 1 hour ago
Socrates
Socrates
Downtown Verona. NJ1h ago
“No one is entitled to the truth.”
E. Howard Hunt – Watergate criminal and professional liar for President Richard Nixon
“If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State.” – Joseph Goebbels, Nazi Psychopath
“I am the perpetual white, Christian, male victim of a ‘deep state'” — Donald ‘Birther Liar’ Trump
Destroyer of Truth: Liberator of Lies: TRUMP 2018
Reply 153 Recommended
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