According to a number of news reports, in addition to bragging about his administration’s “excellent” performance during the pandemic (and who are you going to believe, Mr. Perfect or your lying eyes?), Trump plans to accuse hospitals and health officials of lying about the number of Covid-19 deaths. His campaign will insist that the numbers are exaggerated.
His base will probably believe him. (Google “motivated reasoning.”)
Over the past, horrific three plus years, those of us who do believe our own lying eyes have come to realize that there is absolutely nothing Trump won’t lie about, no matter how inconsequential or even counter-productive. He is so intellectually and emotionally defective, it is entirely possible he believes whatever comes out of his mouth. (In a recent op-ed, George Conway of the Lincoln Project suggested that Trump’s frantic lies are an effort to hide his inadequacies from himself; be that as it may, he clearly lacks the capacity to realize how stupid those lies–and his ungrammatical, misspelled angry tweets– make him look to sane people.)
I have recently come across two examples that illustrate the truly majestic sweep of Trump’s dishonesty, and how it manifests in absolutely anything and everything he mentions. The first was from Juanita Jean.
Well, come to find out, even though Trump constantly says he was great at high school baseball and could have gone pro … no. Not even close.
She then reproduced a tweet in which Trump bragged that, in high school, his baseball coach had called him one of the best players he’d ever coached.
Yeah, sure. As Juanita Jean notes, the reality was that he was pretty much the kid they picked last for the team.
Slate has managed to unearth nine box scores from Trump’s time at New York Military Academy, which showed a four-for-29 batting record in his sophomore, junior, and senior seasons, with three runs batted in and a single run scored. Trump’s batting average in the nine games Slate found box scores for stood at a disappointing .138.
Rational people would say “who cares?” Why would you bother to lie about something that–in the scheme of things–is so trivial? And so easily debunked?
Far more significant is the emerging evidence that Trump is nowhere near as wealthy as he has always claimed to be. His desperate efforts to keep his tax returns secret have led many observers to that conclusion, but up until now, it has all been speculative. With the Supreme Court preparing to rule on whether Trump’s accounting firm must comply with subpoenas for those tax records, Pro Publica has issued a very interesting report about that accounting firm.
The story is titled “Meet the Shadowy Accountants Who Do Trump’s Taxes and Help Him Seem Richer than He is,” a headline that gives a pretty good clue to what the investigation turned up. There was a lot to turn up, too–the investigative team found that in “various episodes” over a period of 30 years, partners of the firm — including its CEO — have been in legal trouble as a result of fraud, misconduct or malpractice.
(And that’s not even counting the New York partner who stabbed his wife to death back in 2016….)
According to Pro Publica, the firm helped Trump pay the least amount of taxes possible, which is what accountants generally do, but it also helped him appear “to be rich beyond imagining”–something that required creating “precisely the opposite impression of what’s in his tax filings.”
This lie is more understandable than the one about baseball. Creepy Steve Bannon is on record opining that, if Trump’s base were to discover that he’s not really a billionaire, the disillusion would trigger mass defections. (In America, there are evidently large numbers of people who believe those lines in “If I Were a Rich Man” from Fiddler on the Roof: “And it wouldn’t matter if I answered right or wrong; when you’re rich, they think you really know.”)
The legal issue before the Court should be a slam-dunk; as the lower courts properly concluded, no one is above the law, and ordering an accounting firm to hand over documents in its possession doesn’t require a President’s time or attention.But who knows?
I hope I’m wrong, but given Mitch McConnell’s appalling success in politicizing the Supreme Court, I don’t hold out much hope that we’ll see Trump’s taxes before November.
But even without the disclosures that lurk in his tax forms, the polls tell us that most Americans trust medical experts and state health officials far more than a President who only tells the truth accidentally.
Let’s just hope we don’t get invaded by aliens from outer space. If Trump warned us, we’d never believe him.
Why wait for aliens from space? Trump is enough already. But your point, Shiela, well made.
Space aliens Sheila!
How could you doubt POTUS? He is trying to save us from space aliens, he is trying to control the border between Earth and the rest of the universe by creating America’s “Space Force” so we can rest easy! After all, we don’t need those stinking space aliens coming in here sticking probes in us, violating our bodies, how disgusting! As a matter of fact, we need to hunt them down, round them up, and move them out, commander Rowdy Yates (Clint Eastwood) found those aliens can even hide as an empty chair! So I’m sure he’s well-equipped to get the job done for the “Men In Orange” Space Force.
I laughed out loud when I read Sheila Kennedy this morning then I wept for my country.
It’s not just baseball. Trump reminds me of the situations where men or women have posed as doctors or nurses, and actually treated the sick and caused their death. We better understand how many thousands have died and are going to die because of this two-bit hustler, sitting in the White House. What’s going to happen when he starts a needless war?
It’s a NATIONAL NIGHTMARE. Will we ever wake up in time? I doubt it.
John Sorg at 6:54am
The Poor Bastard must be seriously sick, waddaya think, John?
My mistake. I meant PLANETARY instead of NATIONAL.
It isn’t just the lies.. it’s the way he tells them. Often he will be at a news conference or rally and while someone else is speaking he will jump in and take over to “correct” them and present his view of the subject. Most often he is wrong, but what the hey, he made it all about himself, re-affirmed his worldview and was back in the spotlight.
What a liar!
The true numbers of his actual wealth I want to know are how much he was worth in 2015 BEFORE the Republican party selected him as their presidential nominee and how much was his actual wealth AFTER their selection. The true numbers…and names…of wealth levels of those Republicans who forced his selection as nominee would be of equal interest.
OMG’s 7:18 a.m. comment says it all.
OMG and everyone: It should be obvious to all that Trump is a raving psychopath. His tweet storm this weekend shows someone who feels the walls closing in and the house of cards collapsing. And security officials are worried about Trump getting the virus…. Crap! Our national security would be ENHANCED with Trump out of the way. We’d actually have real professionals being allowed to do their jobs.
Then there is Trump’s ass-kissing governors…. DeSantis in Florida is doing his Moscow best to suppress actual COVID numbers everywhere. They announced over 1,700 deaths, but those numbers come ONLY from state labs. Private labs’ numbers are being suppressed by the governor. The governors of Iowa and Nebraska and South Dakota are all falling in line with the White House line about the meat packing/virus outbreak dilemma: “No dilemma here. Open it up. Let the companies decide whether or not to test.”
Who would have guessed that our partisanship would lead to such moral vacancy, stupid decisions, ignoring those who can save lives and turning their backs on their own protective policies and guidelines? Well, here we are. The cult of Trump, aka the Republican party willfully and literally puts our lives on the line for their political future. We already know that the only lives Donald Trump cares about are his own and his pet fondling object, Ivanka.
What a sick, disgusting and immoral monster the Republican party has become thanks to corporate greed and the best criminal con man this nation – and perhaps the world – has ever produced. Hitler might turn out to be a chump compared to the moral depravity of our current president.
Could it be possible that the Corona virus finds 45 too toxic and refuses to inhabit his body?
Yes Trump is a truly disgusting human. But what of the Republican party that enables him? They ALL must go. This is a nation changing election
Peggy, you make an excellent point. More than likely, the virus will mutate for the worse once it inhabits those in Washington. We’ll have a new strain to deal with that gives you pneumonia but also erases your moral compass. It will render you a sociopath.
The good news is you’ll be able to accept bribes and make poor decisions without guilt. As Vernon said, you can even fondle your daughter without the slightest notion of being disgusting.
The sad part is Trump and Pompeo’s insistence that the virus leaked from a lab is keeping an investigative unit of WHO out of China. WHO scientists want to track the origins of the virus to see what animal it came from and whether Wuhan was ground zero or just the point it was first detected in China. A few theories are the virus mutated in Wuhan, but it did not originate there.
However, what scares me more and also saddens me, is the 35-40% of Americans who still support Trump, his administration, and the GOP despite all the evidence pointing to it being a bad move.
As for SCOTUS, expect a 5-4 ruling in favor of Trump.
“It’s a NATIONAL NIGHTMARE. Will we ever wake up in time? I doubt it.”
Some of us obviously have but that’s all we’ve done – nothing else. It’s like 90 plus years ago when the Brown Shirts paraded through German cities and all those good Germans stayed inside and hoped forlornly that it would all blow over. It didn’t and it won’t here unless good Americans do the opposite of what all those good Germans didn’t do.
“EcoHealth Alliance, a US group which studies coronaviruses in China, had its grant terminated at the end of April by the National Institutes of Health. The group has worked with the Wuhan Institute of Virology to research potential new viruses, and it seems EcoHealth Alliance may have suffered with input from false information peddled by the right.”
By the way, here is Trump’s Tweet after the 60 Minutes interview yesterday with the director of EcoHealth Alliance.
“.@CBS and their show, @60Minutes, are doing everything within their power, which is far less today than it was in the past, to defend China and the horrible Virus pandemic that was inflicted on the USA and the rest of the World. I guess they want to do business in China!”
If Trump didn’t lie his Tweets and Press Conferences would be an endless parade of “I don’t knows”.
Yes, I think we all agree The Trumpet is a Narcissistic, Sociopath who has only himself as the center of the universe. A parade of grifters, puppets and stooges in the GOP and his appointees will provide all the cover The Trumpet needs. The hard core followers of the Trumpet 35-40% pick up every Reactionary Right Wing conspiracy theory to throw out.
The big problem I see is where is the Democratic Party in all this, specifically Joe Biden. You cannot run just against The Trumpet and expect to win. What is the Democratic Party’s game plan??? Corona cannot be stopped at this point. So what will the Democrats do to alleviate the economic pain the country has and will have into foreseeable future????
The people need something to Vote For!!!! What will it be????
Deplorable enlightenment on the Daily Show may ease your concerns about Trump lies…if this link works:
https://youtu.be/NzDhm808oU4
“A house divided against itself, cannot stand. I believe this government cannot endure permanently half slave and half free. I do not expect the Union to be dissolved — I do not expect the house to fall — but I do expect it will cease to be divided. It will become all one thing or all the other.”
The House Divided Speech was an address given by Abraham Lincoln, later President of the United States, on June 16, 1858, at what was then the Illinois State Capitol in Springfield, after he had accepted the Illinois Republican Party’s nomination as that state’s US senator.
Our house is indeed divided against itself again between incompatible forces that cannot, will not, coexist. The previous time it took truly extraordinary leadership to straighten out but that is apparently not available this time. We can’t let that reality deter us from doing what must be done. We don’t have the luxury of waiting for the cavalry to appear. The opposition is leaderless so must we be.
This commet has little to do with Trump’s lying and everything to do with the Republicans’ assault on social security. Covid 19 appears to be a tailor made virus to take out older Americans so the government does not have to pay them social security. 49% of the deaths were in people 80 and over and 26% of the deaths are in people 70-79. If 49% of the deaths were in people 10 and under and 26% of the deaths were in people 11-20, there would be a lot more screaming. This lack of concern for the elderly is one of the main aspects of American society that my international students think is abominable.
Patmcc – YES – the President is the singular leader-by-example, but it is his enablers, apologists, and those standing silent to keep their power that are at least as important to go . Clean House, (and especially) Clean Senate!
Our children, grandchildren and future generations must see this moment as a triumph for the common good over corruption and greed.
Leslie,
I share your grim assessment and cynicism. Then, Karl Marx predicted that capitalism would destroy itself from within. The cynicism, in my opinion, comes from the unbridled greed of the money changers. Their position is, and always has been, “If it interferes with profits, it is wrong and must be eliminated.” Republicans have fought against Social Security and the rest of the New Deal since before the ink was dry on the legislation. REPUBLICANS SIMPLY DON’T CARE ABOUT THE HEALTH OF THE ELDERLY, THE POOR OR THE DISADVANTAGED. If these people are not contributing to the bottom line, they should be eliminated.
Sorry, but all the flowery language is now gone. Trump and his cult have unleashed the slavering dogs of immorality, hypocrisy and true evil. How else do we explain somebody like Wm. Barr as head of DOJ? There’s no justice there anymore, only partisan politics. THESE are the divisions that WE have to heal, but are not any less dire than the ones Lincoln spoke of in 1858.
As our last valid president, Barack Obama said last week, our grip on the rule of law is at great risk. Without it, we are another lawless land with bands of armed thugs roaming the countryside terrorizing everyone they contact. Dystopia? We may live to see it….as long as my checks keep coming.
Still chuckling over Peggy Hannon’s comment.
We permit a certain amount of lying via political stump speeches and “dealer’s puffing” to a certain degree (ending with preachers like Bakker selling pills that cure the virus) has long been judicially accepted, but lying that brings on death and the destruction of our democracy is beyond the pale and cannot be tolerated in our (so far if teetering) democratic society. While what we the sane call lying may, of course, register differently in the minds of the terminally narcissistic who may consider their lies to be mere affirmation of the world and their grandiose role in it, I don’t know how much longer we the people can allow this current situation to continue, and since no one will do the 25, why editorial boards of all major newspapers (other than, of course, the WSJ money changers) are not calling for Trump’s resignation every day.
For instance, Mark Zandel, a respected economist, is predicting not a recession but a depression if restarting commerce gives us a new peak in the virus, which he also predicts will happen. I have lived through the Great Depression and I can tell those who haven’t that I wouldn’t wish that experience on my worst enemy. So what to do in an era of “see no evil” Republican senators? Agitate for his resignation and hope things hold together till November when we can and will excise this cancer on our body politic. However, hope is not action, so I recommend a 100 million citizens’ march on Washington to demand his resignation in, say, late June, since millions of the unemployed will have nothing else to do, and perhaps we contributors to this blog can form our own little bloc of sign carriers in such mass effort.
Despite my atheism, each night I pray for Trump not to be taken by COVID-19. Instead, my choices for his quick departure include a chain explosion of his head, an inexplicable case of permanent and loud public farting, or, number 1, flesh eating bacteria. If there is a God, why did He begin hating America in 2016?
There’s an adage in law that goes something like this: “if the facts are against you, argue the law. If the law is against you, argue the facts. If both the facts and the law are against you, try to change the facts.” That’s what Team Trump is doing, borrowing a page from the playbook used by insurance defense lawyers, which they’re already trying. The argument goes like this: if someone who has ANY sort of pre-existing condition contracts COVID-19 and then dies, it’s not fair to count the death as due to COVID-19. They argue that it was more likely due to the pre-existing condition, and/or that the pre-existing condition made the victim vulnerable and/or that the pre-existing condition caused the victim to die rather than recover, and they’re trying to bully doctors and medical examiners into not listing the death as COVID-19 related. That’s , of course, to skew the numbers. Don’t scoff at this: Trump has managed to muzzle the doctors at the CDC, the most-prestigious public health agency on earth.
In tort cases, if someone had a pre-existing condition, like a back or neck condition, for example, but they got along OK and could still work and enjoy life , but after getting hit in an accident, they can’t work, are in pain and/or need surgery, the law says that the person causing the wreck is at fault for the entire loss, even if the victim was more vulnerable due to the prior condition. The law says a tortfeasor takes his victim as he finds them.
Another Trump ploy is to allege, without any facts whatsoever, that nurses and doctors are lying about shortages of PPE. Last week, the head of the nurse practitioner organization was at the White House, and said that her colleagues were complaining about a lack of PPE, and Trump tried to discredit her, saying that he’s heard there is more than enough PPE to go around.
Sheila’s point is that everything revolves around Trump and his tender ego, and anything, any person, any fact, any disease that makes him look bad, makes him appear to be in the wrong, or runs counter to the narrative that he’s a strong, fearless leader who is here to save America from Barak Obama, must be attacked and squelched. He won’t even wear a face mask, and now, all of a sudden, Dr. Fauci , Dr. Redfield and the head of the FDA are self-quarantining, but they are still allowed to testify via video, but only to the Republican-controlled Senate, and not the House. We all know that they’re going to try to elicit statements that play down the risk of re-opening businesses despite the fact that no state has met the CDC requirement for 2 weeks of consistent downward trend in new cases. Cases are already going up in places like Georgia. But, it’s probably because they all had pre-existing conditions, that that’s the real cause.
All of this is due to Trump’s malignant narcissism, but what about Republicans? Why do they go along with it? Aren’t there any patriots left in the Republican party?
How’s this? Let’s not bother to recognize any deaths as they are all inevitable.
Trump is will become the first leader in history to bring about immortality for all of his people.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/04/14/president-trump-made-18000-false-or-misleading-claims-1170-days/
According to the April 14, 2020 issue of The Washington Post (almost a month ago), Trump made 18,000 false or misleading claims in 1,170 days.
18,000 lies in 1,170 days.
I don’t know about you guys, but 18,000 seems a bit low to me (seriously). In a quick Google search on his lying, I was entertained by the fact that even the Wikipedia site has information about his bombastic modus operandi. Can’t make that up!
I agree with the narrative on these post concerning the Orange One. However, the thing that bothers me most about our democracy (on life-support itself at the very least) is the SIXTY THREE MILLION VOTERS who thought this scum bag con man was “what America needed!”
Yes, we can pool the 35% (give or take) “base” and, in some ways, live with that. However, only about 3 or 4 weeks ago there was an NBC/WSJ poll that said 60% thought “Trump was doing an adequate job” dealing with the Covid Crisis. What???
I think we are dealing with a bigger problem (if that’s possible) than Trump, the party formerly known as the GOP, the corrupt departments, etc.
I think we are seeing, in its entirety, the results of a national public education system that has been deteriorating, hacked at, bludgeoned and left for dead for the last 30-40 years. I am VERY serious about this.
As most (all) know, education in the past few decades is only (for the most part) for those who can afford it, not unlike health care (and most other services and/or commodities). Yes, we all know (and I am one of them) people who got Pell Grants, scholarships, etc. However, I am talking about public opportunities to get GOOD across the board education from K though College. MOST (the majority) people in this country don’t even bother thinking about college (much less graduate schools). They think they have a better chance at winning the lottery. Seriously.
All to say that I think Trump’s election, the gullibility and non-sense of the “electorate” are mere (but dangerous) SYMPTOMS of our country that has gone, quite literally, ignorant (if not flat out stupid).
John Adams famously advocated for government funded public education through college for ALL primarily so that “the people” would be capable of making good rational decisions for their elected representatives!!! Unfortunately, Adams lost that argument. To see how his idea, indeed, does work, look no further than the “evil and broken” (GOP says) social democracies in Europe.
Critical thinking skills have become nearly extinct and we have presumed “news” outlets who do their part in the “dumbing down” process of their audiences, some more than others, but they are ALL complicit in my opinion.
So as big as the problems as Trump and Circus are (and we all agree they are HUGE!!!), my overarching concern is a population of millions who have not only allowed this present political pariah to appear, but feeds on it and feeds it at the same time! THAT is what truly keeps me up at night. Trump will be gone some day (hopefully sooner), but our ignorant and angry MILLIONS will GROW/MULTIPLY and STILL be with us. What to do about that???
Brad may well be right in identifying a lack of education K through college and the collapse of critical thinking as the culprits spawning those today who are called a cult. I didn’t know that Adams wanted public education to and through college so that voters could make a good choice of those who governed them, but here note that slaves and women were not permitted the vote then though governed by those elected by white males, so presumably their “educations” were unnecessary. I also note that 35-40 % of voters these days want to have someone else do their thinking for them whether schooled or not, and that millions more do not vote at all out of laziness or indifference, but are in fact voting in that their numbers could make the difference in who wins and who loses.
OMG,
Without a doubt in my mind!
Marv,
I think that horse left the barn a long time ago. I don’t think anything can be rectified without a lot of grief! And I mean grief by everyone. When the powers-that-be who could actually do something about this situation but continue to let an insane individual Captain the Titanic, I E our homes, through the icebergs, they should all be forced to dig their graves and despatched forth with!
See today’s presser? Just completed. Circular nonsense with expected insults of certain journalists. They are brave for even showing up.
A.J: You’re right! Peggy nailed it again.
john,
It’s a terrible disaster. It appears now we’re heading for something worse than the Depression years. We’re frozen and as Tom pointed out in a previous comment:
“Some of us obviously have [woken-up] but that’s all we’ve done – nothing else. It’s like 90 plus years ago when the Brown Shirts paraded through German cities and all those good Germans stayed inside and hoped forlornly that it would all blow over. It didn’t and it won’t here unless good Americans do the opposite of what all those good Germans didn’t do.”
This mess isn’t going to blow over. Are we waiting for the Democratic Party or the likes of the Southern Poverty Law Center to dig us out of this hole? It’ll never happen. Our only REALISTIC HOPE is to re-organize with new leadership, and re-group somehow to stop the carnage before all is lost. The present is gone. I’m talking about saving the future before it’s too late.
It’s a horrible remake of “Catch Me if You Can,” even to the point of his manufacturing money he doesn’t have.