Lyin’ Donald Trump

(cross posted from GD-2016

I forced myself to watch Donald Trump’s acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention, not because I am a masochist, but because I believe that you must confront and understand evil if you are to be successful in defeating it. I will admit that I had to turn the volume down a bit; I couldn’t stand The Donald shouting at me as he robotically read his lines, and maybe I did a little multi-tasking. However, I did watch the entire hour and 15 minutes of the most dreary and depressing speech I have ever seen or heard. There were no rays of hope to break up the doom and gloom, no “but we are Americans and we have overcome far worse”. There on only the Trump pledge to fix everything that is wrong with this country, and that inspired no hope what so ever.

Hopefully those suffering from severe depression had enough sense to not watch the speech; apparently they didn’t because I heard nothing of the suicide rate spiking Thursday night. Or perhaps, like me, they couldn’t reconcile what is happening in their lives with the situation that Donald Trump was describing.

As Trump droned on indeterminately with statistic after depressing statistic I started recognizing familiar topics, subjects I knew something about. I found myself mumbling under my breath again and again, “Wait a minute, that can’t be right” And then, “That SOB is lying to the American public while giving the most important speech of his life.” However, looking back, given the way he has handled his entire campaign, I don’t know why I should have been the least bit surprised.

After the speech I started researching public records for the points from Trump’s speech that I could remember. I found that while some his statements might have been technically true, if you closed one eye and held your mouth just right, they were misleading a hell. They were based on information cherry picked to present the data in the most damning light possible. The Trump campaign staff members who wrote that speech made those in the Bush administration who distorted the facts to convince the country to go to war in Iraq look like amateurs.

To me this is the worst kind of lie. For instance, to manufacture that kind of lie you have to sort through reams of data which indicates that violent crime in this country has been decreasing for many years in order to find that kernel of information which, when taken out of context, seems to indicate that violent crime is instead increasing, and that we should be very afraid.

In another misrepresentation of the facts, Trump tried to convince us ......

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Lyin’ Donald Trump (includes links to fact checking articles)