Other than those who receive a government salary to gaslight us during White House press briefings, there aren’t many Americans who would deny that President Donald Trump is a liar.
His most ardent supporters know he lies. The fact that he’s a particularly bold-faced dissembler is baked into their never-wavering support. He’s their liar. They believe he’s lying on their behalf, so it’s OK. It would be different if he were a Democrat, though.
The cliche is that the average Trump supporter takes him “seriously, but not literally.” That’s because Mr. Trump has been caught in so many lies so often that his lies are now a matter of daily statistical aggregation at The Washington Post.
The New York Times and other legacy media outlets no longer hesitate to use the word “lie” in news copy or in headlines when referring to Mr. Trump. Calling a president a liar used to generate angst in most American newsrooms because it could be taken — or mistaken — for bias.
Nearly two years into his presidency, Mr. Trump’s lies have generated an entire beat, with reporters and editors specifically tasked with cataloging presidential whoppers on a spectrum from casual misstatements to conscious prevarication.
Those of us in the media, whether personally liberal or conservative, agnostic about whether he’s a good president or convinced he’s a threat to the republic, a straight news reporter who doesn’t vote or a stridently partisan columnist, we all know that Mr. Trump is a liar.
The media has exhaustively itemized Mr. Trump’s quotes stretching back decades. We can compare what he says he will do to what he actually does and has done. The difference is shocking only to those who haven’t fully internalized the fact that the man lies even about small, inconsequential things.
This has led to a distortion in not only our national politics, but in our expectations of nearly every institution in American life. His lies haven’t exactly fooled us, but they have managed to make Americans more tolerant of (and less revolted by) lies regularly told to us, especially if they advance a narrowly partisan agenda.
Mr. Trump’s lies have had a spillover effect on the Republican-controlled House and Senate. Because Mr. Trump remains popular with the GOP base, Congress refuses to exercise even basic oversight over the executive branch. Mr. Trump is volatile and unpredictable, so Republican politicians defer to him in most things rather than face the hate-mongering of one of his tweet storms.
Now the contagion of lies and partisan hackery unleashed by Mr. Trump’s presidency will find a place on the U.S. Supreme Court. As I type these words, Judge Brett Kavanaugh awaits a vote in the U.S. Senate that will determine whether he will become the ninth vote on the highest court on the land. If he does, conservative justices will have a solid majority for decades.
Last week, millions of Americans watched in horror and fascination as Judge Kavanaugh made a nakedly angry appeal to the Judiciary Committee and the audience around the world to elevate him to the U.S. Supreme Court despite questions about his alleged actions as a teenager and his temperament today.
In denying that he sexually assaulted Christine Blasey Ford when she was 15 and he was 17, Judge Kavanaugh took umbrage at any suggestion that he had been a heavy drinker in his youth, blacked out or had sexually degraded women, no matter what his coded yearbook entry from Georgetown Prep said.
Like Mr. Trump, Judge Kavanaugh chose to “misremember” inconvenient facts. Even the definition of slang terms from the early 1980s changed from malicious and salacious to benign and innocent when he mis-explained what they meant in his yearbook. Millions of Americans watched with mouths agape as Judge Kavanaugh unilaterally redefined common scatalogical terms from that era as if no one would notice. It was as blatant a declaration of his contempt for America’s collective intelligence as it could get.
Judge Kavanaugh’s lying about those little things was almost as disturbing as his angry opening statement, which reminded us that he’s been a partisan GOP operator far longer than he’s been a judge.
The combination of his lying about little things and his open display of fury would’ve been enough to cast doubt on his nomination in a normal year, even without the underlying question of whether the allegations of sexual assault were true or not. A judge lying about so many little things should have been a disqualifying shock. It wasn’t because of the cascade of lies we’re already swimming in thanks to Mr. Trump, who has normalized lying.
My gut tells me that Judge Kavanaugh will be confirmed. His confirmation will generate a lot of anger, tears and primal screams among liberals, along with a renewed determination to thwart Donald Trump and the GOP at the polls next month.
Ironically, those who spurned civic engagement for years because of all the lying in politics now know that the only way to save our democracy is to oppose the biggest lie of all — that the system is capable of operating properly — or honestly — without them.
Tony Norman: tnorman@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1631.
First Published: October 5, 2018, 4:00 a.m.
