In the Trump administration there are mostly lies, and I'm glad to see that the major media organizations are finally calling his lies what they are: lies. Not misstatements, not errors, lies.
Of course, sometimes they are misstatements, especially when he's on a roll at a rally. It's easy to make an error in that kind of situation. The one time that I can recall a similar error by our previous president was when he referred to "57 states" when he was talking about the 47 states he had visited. Obviously just a slip of the tongue, just as I'm (relatively) sure that Trump understands that Colorado doesn't share a border with Mexico. But with Trump it goes beyond gaffes, it goes beyond misstatements or even exaggeration, he lies about things that can be easily fact checked, sometimes about things that are right in front of us.
Daniel Dale of CNN, famous for documenting Trump's thousands of lies and for popularizing the "sir alerts", use of the word "sir" that often precede a suspect Trump story, related a recurring Trump lie this week. Trump often stirs upon animosity toward the media during his rallies, sometimes accusing them of turning off the cameras during his speech. He couples this with his "observation" that he can see "the red light go off". Except that not only are they not turning off there cameras, but there is no red light. He's lying about something that is happening right in front of us, but that doesn't stop him. Frequently during White House photo ops, usually when he is signing some ultimately meaningless executive order, he has some human props behind him, like uniformed police or construction workers in hard hats. On several occasions he has referred to these men as crying, or in tears, happy that someone was finally doing something for them. Except that video of these events always show stoic faces, or sometimes smiling faces, but never, ever, people crying.
And then there's the recurring story of how he "got" choice for veterans. According to him "they" have been trying for 10 or 15 years (the number is inconsistent) but he finally got it done, because he loves the military. Except that the Veterans' Choice law, co-sponsored by Senators Bernie Sanders and John McCain, was signed into law in 2014 by President Barack Obama.
What's my point? My point is that with so many documented, lies, so many lies out in the open, so many lies about things that can be checked with a 20-second Google search, why would anyone believe anything he says about the things that we can't check?
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