Trump's Relentless Assault on the Truth
By Eugene Robinson
June 17, 2016
WASHINGTON -- Donald Trump must be the biggest liar in the history of American politics, and that's saying something.
Trump lies the way other people breathe. We're used to politicians who stretch the truth, who waffle or dissemble, who emphasize some facts while omitting others. But I can't think of any other political figure who so brazenly tells lie after lie, spraying audiences with such a fusillade of untruths that it is almost impossible to keep track. Perhaps he hopes the media and the nation will become numb to his constant lying. We must not.
......
It goes against all journalistic instinct to write in a news story, as The Washington Post did Monday, that Trump's national security address was "a speech laden with falsehoods and exaggeration." But I don't think we're doing our job if we simply report assertions of fact without evaluating whether they are factual.
Trump's lies also present a challenge for voters. The normal assumption is that politicians will bend the truth to fit their ideology -- not that they will invent fake "truth" out of whole cloth. Trump is not just an unorthodox candidate. He is an inveterate liar -- maybe pathological, maybe purposeful. He doesn't distort facts, he makes them up.
Trump has a right to his anger, his xenophobia and his bigotry. He also has a right to lie -- but we all have a duty to call him on it.
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2016/06/17/trumps_relentless_assault_on_the_truth_130912.html
DO SOMETHING!
| 
