Is it too early to declare outright that our current American president is a serial liar?
I think we have waited long enough. It turns out that President Donald Trump’s bogus challenge to President Barack Obama’s birth certificate was only the beginning of the former reality TV star’s whoppers.
For weeks, political journalists and their editors have debated whether it is proper to use the L-word to describe a peculiar habit of Trump’s. He says things that are demonstrably false, yet insists they are true — and threatens to hurl insults at you if you insist on seeing something like evidence.
"Falsehood," "misstatement" or "untruth" don’t cut it when "bogus," "baseless" or my old favorite, "bull jive," hit closer to the point.
The staid, reserved New York Times raised many eyebrows by using the L-word in a front-page headline, no less, on Jan. 23 to say Trump repeated "an election lie" during a meeting with congressional leaders, no less, at the White House.
The lie was Trump’s often-repeated allegation that he would have won the popular vote in November but for "millions of people who voted illegally."
Jaw meet floor. That whopper must have been breathtaking for congressional leaders from both parties, whether they said it out loud or not.
Yet, when questioned about it, the best Trump and his team have come up with is the thousands of dead people who are still on the rolls or the many live people who are improperly registered in more than one state because they moved.
Alas, there’s no evidence that anyone voted in their names. Trump would rather undermine the credibility of our democracy than admit he’s grandstanding again.
Trump is only getting bolder. After recent CNN and Gallup polls said he had the lowest approval ratings of any new president in the history of polling — and that more than half disapproved of his controversial travel order as an attempt to keep Muslims out of the country — Trump tweeted on Monday that "Any negative polls are fake news, just like the CNN, ABC, NBC polls in the election. Sorry, people want border security and extreme vetting."
"Fake news"? Look who’s talking.
President Trump hits majority disapproval in record time, poll finds
Gallup has measured job approval for presidents for decades. (Jan. 30, 2017)
Gallup has measured job approval for presidents for decades. (Jan. 30, 2017)
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Trump’s selective dismissal of polls he does not like reminds me of Evillene, the grumpy witch in the musical "The Wiz" who sang, "Don’t Nobody Bring Me No Bad News." Trump simply calls it "fake news" and moves on.
But, of course, we the people want border security, extreme vetting and any other serious measures that will make us safer. But that doesn’t excuse the rushed, raggedy and downright cruel way that Team Trump wrote and executed his travel ban, igniting televised chaos, confusion and protests at airports.
Which makes it all the more ironic that his counsel and frequent spokeswoman Kellyanne Conway in at least three interviews referenced "the Bowling Green massacre" which, as you probably have heard, never happened. At least she acknowledged her mistake later. I’m still waiting for her boss to say the same about Obama’s birth certificate. (That’s right, Mr. Trump, some of us will never forget.) Trump reached new heights of lowdown media bashing in a speech at MacDill Air Force Base, near Tampa, Fla., on Monday where he accused the media of deliberately minimizing coverage of Islamic State terrorists.
"It’s gotten to a point where it’s not even being reported," Trump told his military audience. "And in many cases, the very, very dishonest press doesn’t want to report it. They have their reasons and you understand that."
No, Mr. Trump, I don’t understand that. Neither do the hard-working journalists who have been covering the Islamic State terror story, some at the cost of their lives.
Asked for evidence to back up Trump’s claim, the White House released a list of 78 attacks since September 2014. Sure enough, all were covered by U.S. and international media, some for days on end. The terror list became one more Trump mess for his staff to clean up.
Yes, it would be courteous and respectful to say that, at best, our current president plays fast and loose with facts. But one of my father’s favorite lines is closer to the point: "Maybe the truth just ain’t in him."
Clarence Page, a member of the Tribune Editorial Board, blogs at www.chicagotribune.com/pagespage.
cpage@chicagotribune.com
Twitter @cptime
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