Call out his lies. He depends on them.
By E.J. Dionne Jr.
May 30 at 7:49 PM
By now, we know that President Trump is a lying demagogue. Because this is not said often enough, he has been allowed to routinize lying and enshrine the vilest forms of divisiveness as a normal part of our politics. Lies do not deserve deference just because a president tells them.
We thought that the media learned during Joseph R. McCarthy’s heyday that “We report the lies, you decide” is not a responsible approach to journalism. Trump’s egregiousness requires everyone to take a refresher course in the lesson of McCarthyism.
At the same time, just calling out deceit is insufficient. It is essential as well to understand why Trump tells particular lies at particular moments and to be hardheaded in judging how effective they are. This is a precondition to turning back the smears and the falsehoods.
Trump’s address Tuesday at a Nashville rally was a lollapalooza of deception. He kept the fact-checkers busy. PolitiFact raised doubts about 15 of his statements and flatly rated 10 of them as “mostly false,” “false” or “pants on fire.”
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https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/call-out-his-lies-he-depends-on-them/2018/05/30/675921a8-644a-11e8-99d2-0d678ec08c2f_story.html
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