The Kansas City Star has been tracking the outpouring (the article has a list dating back to January 21):
Two weeks ago, U.S. President Donald Trump was much more honest than usual. He made a mere 10 false claims, about half of his usual weekly average.
As always, it didn’t last. Trump made 30 false claims last week, including 21 during an especially freewheeling 46-minute Missouri speech about his proposed tax legislation.
In total, Trump has now made 907 false claims over his first 318 days in office — an average of 2.9 false claims per day.
Trump has proven uniquely willing to lie, exaggerate and mislead. By all expert accounts, he is more frequently inaccurate than any of his predecessors.(BTW, the Star is generous. The New York Times has counted 1,628 Rump lies since taking office.)
Bella DePaulo, a social scientist who studies the psychology of lying, has never seen anyone like the rotten- to- the- core Rump, especially in one particular aspect:
The most stunning way Trump’s lies differed from our participants’, though, was in their cruelty. An astonishing 50 percent of Trump’s lies were hurtful or disparaging. For example, he proclaimed that John Brennan, James Clapper and James Comey, all career intelligence or law enforcement officials, were “political hacks.” He said that “the Sloppy Michael Moore Show on Broadway was a TOTAL BOMB and was forced to close.” Talking about green card applicants, he insisted that other “countries, they don’t put their finest in the lottery system. They put people probably in many cases that they don’t want.” And he claimed that “Ralph Northam, who is running for Governor of Virginia, is fighting for the violent MS-13 killer gangs & sanctuary cities.” [snip]
By telling so many lies, and so many that are mean-spirited, Trump is violating some of the most fundamental norms of human social interaction and human decency. Many of the rest of us, in turn, have abandoned a norm of our own — we no longer give Trump the benefit of the doubt that we usually give so readily. (our emphasis)We stopped giving Rump the benefit of any doubt wayyy back when he was suckering rubes with his "University," filing for bankruptcy and leaving his creditors in the lurch, and stirring up racial animosity by ignorantly intruding himself into the Central Park Five case.
Looking at the Alabama special election tomorrow, Amy Davidson Sorkin wonders how low the party of Rump and his mini- me, serial sexual predator and pedophile Roy Moore, would go:
What would they tolerate in order to secure the fifty-first vote? Put another way, if the Party is willing to give its money and its credibility to protect a candidate accused of molesting teen-agers, what might it talk itself into doing to protect the President? Robert Mueller may be interested in the answer.If there's any consolation to this dumpster fire of an election, it's that, whatever the outcome, the Republican Party is the big loser. The danger, as Sorkin points out, is that either way, it reveals a desperate party willing to do anything to hold onto power -- even to the point of torpedoing an investigation into the Rump crime family and what the Russians have on Rump.
Last, for your medley of wide- ranging links, we recommend checking out Infidel 743's link round- up again this morning. Lots of topics of interest and amusement.
