The New Yorker: Introducing a New Series: Trump and the Truth

[riversedge]

Introducing a New Series: Trump and the Truth

http://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/introducing-a-new-series-trump-and-the-truth

By David Remnick , September 2, 2016



..................But sometimes there really is something new under the political sun. Donald Trump, the Republican nominee for President, does not so much struggle with the truth as strangle it altogether. He lies to avoid. He lies to inflame. He lies to promote and to preen. Sometimes he seems to lie just for the hell of it. He traffics in conspiracy theories that he cannot possibly believe and in grotesque promises that he cannot possibly fulfill. When found out, he changes the subject—or lies larger.

We are not alone in noticing this characteristic of Trump’s. It has been the central preoccupation of much of the decent journalism produced in the past year. Trump’s capacity for lying inspires equal parts awe and revulsion. Even journalists raised in the Nixon era cannot but be impressed. The accounting is revealing and requires updating on a daily basis. Fact-checking sites such as Politifact have focussed an intelligent lens on Trump, and so have many excellent reporters from the Washington Post and the New York Times........................

.......................

Those sentences, like all the other sentences in “The Art of the Deal,” were ghostwritten by Tony Schwartz, who recently, in these pages, denounced Trump as pathologically unfamiliar with the notion of truth. “Lying is second nature to him,” Schwartz told Jane Mayer. “More than anyone else I have ever met, Trump has the ability to convince himself that whatever he is saying at any given moment is true, or sort of true, or at least ought to be true.”

In recent weeks, reporters and the fact-checking department at The New Yorker have put their efforts into a series of reported essays about Trump and lying. No one here is suggesting that Trump is the only politician ever to unleash a whopper. In fact, Hillary Clinton has had her bald-faced moments—moments that are too kindly described as “lawyerly.” But, in the scale and in the depth of his lying, Donald Trump is in another category; this effort, which begins with Eyal Press’s essay on Trump and immigration and will continue every week through the election, is by way of keeping track of a record that appears to know no bounds, and certainly no shame.

[TreasonousBastard]

1. I do not, for the life of me, understand how...

they can get away with claiming Hillary is the liar in this race.

I really don't get it. Anything bad about Hillary gets immediate attention and is accepted as a fact. Anything bad about the orange monster is dismissed as campaign BS, and further evidence that Hillary is a lair and unfit.

The mind is in a continuous state of boggle.

[rock]

4. It's easy, really.

One of these sides is full of liars. Now do you get why they claim Hillary is the liar?

[monmouth4]

2. A tale of fiction for sure...n/t

[saidsimplesimon]

3. The New Yorker and The Atlantic

should receive wider circulation and qudos for excellence in reporting. Not to say I always agree, but I consider the material offered, just as I did when that witty conservative Willam Buckley tickeled my love of language.

[shadowmayor]

5. There are only two kinds of Americans

Those who read and those who don't. Wonder what percentage of STFU donny supporters haven't read a single book in the last 5 years?