During the press conference with Mitch McConnell earlier this week President Trump suggested that we "not believe what we read", that he and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell had a great friendship and working relationship, and just so you wouldn't think this was a new development, he told us that he "has had" a great friendship with Mitch. He wants us to think that a feud between Trump and McConnell is a creation of "The Fake Media", and that there's nothing to see here, please move along. But we don't have to rely on the media, we don't have to lean on the pundits, we don't have to be beholden to the "failing New York Times". We only have to read Trump's tweets, which are full of attacks on McConnell, including calls for him to resign.
This is not new, this is not the first occurrence of this behavior, this is not a slip of the tongue. This is gas-lighting, plain and simple. This is lying in order to manipulate someone. Most of these lies can be and are easily checked, so you would logically think that this would stop. But if you think about it, we all know people who act like this. Boyfriends, wives, employers, friends, who tell a big enough lie often enough that you doubt your own sanity. My first wife once insisted to me that a stop light that was on the corner two doors down from our house wasn't there; I doubted myself so much that I had to go out and check to make sure that it was really there. (It was)
This Presidential gas-lighting would seem insane if it wasn't for the fact that some people ignore what they see and hear and believe what Trump says. Why do you think there's the drumbeat on "fake news" and the constant attacks on specific media outlets? Doubt is thrown on all sources of information except for him? Even when the source of the information is him, like his tweets, if he wants to change the narrative he simply tells us that "the fake news" took it out of context, or he tells us what he really meant, or one of his mouthpieces spins it in a contradictory way, further confusing the matter. A few days after the election, when Trump had some rare conciliatory things to say about Secretary Clinton and was respectful to President Obama, and he talked about how "very, very, important" it was to him to be "President of all the people", I asked if we were supposed to forget all the hateful and divisive things that he said during the campaign? An acquaintance of mine took the position that Trump hadn't said hateful or divisive things during the campaign. Little did I know how widespread that would be.
So, are there four lights, or five?
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