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Robert Reich: Donald Trumps War on Truth Tellers
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/donald_trump_actively_destroying_truth-telling_institutions_20170312Donald Trump’s War on Truth Tellers
Posted on Mar 12, 2017
By Robert Reich / RobertReich.org
Trump and his White House don’t argue on the merits. They attack the credibility of the institutions that come up with facts and arguments they don’t like.
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Rubbish. The only way we can understand the true dimensions of the problems real people face is with data about these problems, from sources the public trusts. But if the credibility of those sources is repeatedly called into question by the president of the United States, there’s no shared truth.
When Trump disagreed with judicial findings about his original travel ban, he didn’t offer any reasons or analyses. Instead, he called the judge who issued the stay a “so-called judge” and attacked the appellate judges who upheld it as “so political” they weren’t “able to read a statement and do what’s right.”
When he blamed the intelligence agencies for the downfall of his first national security advisor, he didn’t spell out why. He just attacked them, issuing disparaging tweets with “intelligence” in quotation marks.
When he dislikes press reports, Trump doesn’t try to correct them. He assails the press as “the enemy of the American people,” “dishonest,” purveyors of “fake news,” and “the opposition party,” and questions their motives (they “have their own agenda, and it’s not your agenda, and it’s not the country’s agenda”)
When polls show that he has a low approval rating, he doesn’t say he expects the rating to improve. He attacks the entire polling industry, asserting “any negative polls are fake news.”
When scientists come up with conclusion he disagrees with, he doesn’t offer other credible sources of scientific data. He attacks science.
When he blamed the intelligence agencies for the downfall of his first national security advisor, he didn’t spell out why. He just attacked them, issuing disparaging tweets with “intelligence” in quotation marks.
When he dislikes press reports, Trump doesn’t try to correct them. He assails the press as “the enemy of the American people,” “dishonest,” purveyors of “fake news,” and “the opposition party,” and questions their motives (they “have their own agenda, and it’s not your agenda, and it’s not the country’s agenda”)
When polls show that he has a low approval rating, he doesn’t say he expects the rating to improve. He attacks the entire polling industry, asserting “any negative polls are fake news.”
When scientists come up with conclusion he disagrees with, he doesn’t offer other credible sources of scientific data. He attacks science.
Trump thinks climate change is a hoax. His new head of the Environmental Protection Agency asserted last week that climate change isn’t caused by human activity.
What does the Trump administration do to prove the point? Nothing. Instead, it tells EPA staffers to remove pages from the EPA’s website concerning climate change, and threatens to review all the agency’s data and publications, and cuts the budgets of all scientific research in government.
Trump’s big lies are bad enough because they subvert the truth and sow confusion. But Trump’s attacks on the institutions we rely on as sources of the truth are even more dangerous, because they make it harder for the public to believe anything.
In a democracy, the truth is a common good. Trump is actively destroying the truth-telling institutions our democracy depends on.
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