With Hillary, the Fear Is She Is Not Telling The Truth; With Trump, The Danger is That He Is...
The narrative that you hear from both the left and the right is that while Hillary says one thing, she may really mean it notwithstanding the fact that most fact checkers generally rate the bulk of her statements as true. Nonetheless, critics speculate that maybe she secretly wants to start a war with Iran, maybe she actually is racist, maybe she will cut taxes for the rich, rather than raise them, maybe she will accept TPP. Yet, as Ezra Klein noted, most Presidential candidates do try to fulfill their campaign promises for better or worse.
That being said, with Trump, we have pundits and his supporters repeatedly dismissing his most outrageous statements as not being serious or being sarcastic. It is impossible to list them all, but the statements include:
* His calls for Russia to hack his opponent.
* His proposal to threaten default on the U.S. debt.
* His suggestion that the spread of nuclear weapons is okay.
* His endorsement of torture much worse than water boarding.
* His statements that he might not live up to the U.S.'s NATO treaty obligations.
* His dismissal of grabbing women by the genitals as locker room talk.
* His claims that judges are biased against him because of their race.
* His claims that the election is rigged and insistence that he would not accept the results of the election.
* His claim that climate change is a Chinese hoax.
* His insistence that Mexican immigrants are rapists and criminals.
* His calls to reintroduce racial profiling.
* His insistence that the election is rigged, and that his supporters should take active steps to prevent rampant voter fraud.
Every time that Trump has said these statements, even after he has doubled down with a follow-up tweet, pundits and his campaign dismiss his statements as sarcasm or hyperbole.
What is scary is how the media and even his own supporters seem to take it as a matter of faith that Trump is bullshitting us, and that is okay, because we hope that he is more reasonable than he sounds. We are counting on him lying to us on some very key, fundamental issues. I think this is crazy.
This is what I would raise with Trump supporters. While they complain that Hillary might be lying, the danger with Trump is that he might be telling the truth regarding the nature of the policies he believes in and wishes to adopt. If so, heaven help us that he might be telling the truth on his most outrageous claims and promises.
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