Donald Trump tells a lot of lies -- but he's just building on a long Republican tradition
MONDAY, FEB 27, 2017 05:00 AM EST
Anti-choicers, creationists and climate-change denialists honed the lie-all-the-time strategy. Trump perfected it
AMANDA MARCOTTE
It’s an established fact: President Donald Trump is a shameless, relentless liar. He rarely makes it through a public appearance without uttering deliberate, outrageous falsehoods. Lies defined his campaign, creating a cottage industry of journalists listing and even cataloguing his lies. Now that he’s in office, the relentless lying has continued and may have even increased, creating a real crisis for publications that want to keep track of them all, since the sheer volume of his lies tests the capacities of even the most well-funded news organizations.
Under the circumstances, it’s tempting to treat Trump as an anomaly and to view his mendacity as some sort of new development in conservative circles. But while Trump has introduced a new level of dishonesty into the world of White House communications, the grim reality is that his duplicity builds on years — decades, really — of movement conservatism honing lies as a major and, in some cases, central public relations tactic.
For journalists like myself who have covered the reproductive-rights struggle for a long time, Trump’s bottomless ability to lie feels very familiar. The anti-choice movement is the vanguard of the conservative movement generally. Tactics that anti-choicers develop and hone tend to spread out through conservatism, and nowhere is this more evident when it comes to the use of shameless lying as a tactic.
What’s remarkable about the anti-choice movement is that it lies about pretty much everything. Anti-choice activists have churned through a series of legal and rhetorical gambits over the years, and while the focus may change, one thing always stays the same: Their arguments are built on a foundation of lies. Every time, without fail.
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http://www.salon.com/2017/02/27/donald-trump-tells-a-lot-of-lies-but-hes-just-building-on-a-long-republican-tradition/
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