The Political Page - Pathological Liar
Trump Lies Compared to Obama
by Abi Travis
There's one thing that people on both sides of the political aisle can agree on: All politicians lie. It's an unfortunate truth, but it is the truth, and it's important to be aware of it every time you hear someone in office start to speak. Politicians are constantly playing a game of balancing their own opinions with their party's and with their constituents'. Some lies may be accidental while others are more malicious. Very few (if any) of them are ever beneficial in the long run. That being said... Donald Trump lies. A lot.
Trump’s Lies vs. Your Brain
By Maria Konnikova - January/February 2017
All presidents lie. Richard Nixon said he was not a crook, yet he orchestrated the most shamelessly crooked act in the modern presidency (This was before the issues with Donald Trump and his administration). Ronald Reagan said he wasn’t aware of the Iran-Contra deal; there’s evidence he was. Bill Clinton said he did not have sex with that woman; he did, or close enough. Lying in politics transcends political party and era. It is, in some ways, an inherent part of the profession of politicking.
But Donald Trump is in a different category. The sheer frequency, spontaneity and seeming irrelevance of his lies have no precedent. Nixon, Reagan and Clinton were protecting their reputations; Trump seems to lie for the pure joy of it. A whopping 70 percent of Trump’s statements that PolitiFact checked during the campaign were false, while only 4 percent were completely true, and 11 percent mostly true. (Compare that to the politician Trump dubbed “crooked,” Hillary Clinton: Just 26 percent of her statements were deemed false.)
Those who have followed Trump’s career say his lying isn’t just a tactic, but an ingrained habit. New York tabloid writers who covered Trump as a mogul on the rise in the 1980s and ’90s found him categorically different from the other self-promoting celebrities in just how often, and pointlessly, he would lie to them. In his own autobiography, Trump used the phrase “truthful hyperbole,” a term coined by his ghostwriter referring to the flagrant truth-stretching that Trump employed, over and over, to help close sales. Trump apparently loved the wording, and went on to adopt it as his own.
The Liar in Chief:
Trumps states that the Democrats are using the virulent coronavirus as a “hoax” to damage him and his administration.
Donald J. Trump ✔ @realDonaldTrump
So last year 37,000 Americans died from the common Flu. It averages between 27,000 and 70,000 per year. Nothing is shut down, life & the economy go on. At this moment there are 546 confirmed cases of CoronaVirus, with 22 deaths. Think about that!
“The Democrats are politicizing the coronavirus,” he said from a campaign rally in North Charleston, South Carolina.
“One of my people came up to me and said ‘Mr. President they tried to beat you on Russia, Russia, Russia. That didn’t work out too well.’ They couldn’t do it. They tried the impeachment hoax that was on a perfect conversation,” he continued.
“This is their new hoax,” he said, referring to the coronavirus.
Trump says he knew coronavirus was a pandemic 'long before' it was declared.
President Trump on Tuesday said that he realized that the coronavirus outbreak was a pandemic before the World Health Organization (WHO) labeled it as such last week.
"This is a pandemic. I felt it was a pandemic long before it was called a pandemic," Trump said at a press conference with his coronavirus task force. "All you had to do was look at other countries."
The president's comments were in response to being asked if he agreed that his rhetoric surrounding the coronavirus become more reserved on Monday. Trump disagreed, saying that he always knew the outbreak was "serious."
Trump's answer immediately drew ire, with some pointing to a March 9 tweet of the president's.
"The Fake News Media and their partner, the Democrat Party, is doing everything within its semi-considerable power (it used to be greater!) to inflame the CoronaVirus situation, far beyond what the facts would warrant"
