Donald Trump truth meter and his lie surrotages

The Washington Post’s Fact Checker’s count as of Oct. 9, the president had made 13,435 false or misleading claims since taking office. 

Truth itself is distorted under a political lense.  Republicans have turned their back on truth and their oath of office.  Every court of law requires defendents to swear an oath to tell the truth before they testify.  In the Ten Commandments:  Honesty must always characterize our speech and conduct (John 14:6)

“No legacy is so rich as honesty.” William Shakespeare

Kathleen Parker opinion echo published in the Goshen News, an Indiana newspaper:

Shakespeare long ago wrote that “truth will out,” meaning that what’s true — by virtue of its basis in fact and logic — eventually will conquer the lie.

Sometimes truth is so eager to be heard that it slips past the speaker’s tongue without his conscious cooperation.

Enter acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney. On Thursday, Mulvaney’s cat escaped the bag he had been carrying for Trump during his 10-month-long “acting” tenure.

Yes, yes, yes, we withheld funds to Ukraine in order to obtain help investigating the 2016 hacking of a Democratic National Committee server! You could almost hear the relief of having gotten it out — the truth, that is — so that he could get some REM sleep for a change.

Keeping the lie that there was no quid pro quo, as the official White House narrative went on and on, would have been a burden to the good, which Mulvaney is. If he were otherwise, surely he’d be the non-acting chief of staff by now. It’s the liars and the not-so-good who seem to survive in the Trump administration.

Mick Mulvaney's alternate reality

Mulvaney’s days, on the other hand, are likely numbered. Truth may be the heart’s best friend, but it is not helpful in the sort of presidential politics being played out on Pennsylvania Avenue. This may explain Mulvaney’s near-immediate walk-back of his comments to the press. He issued a statement asserting “there was absolutely no quid pro quo” (because Ukraine didn’t produce anything?) and that the pause on funding was related only to “corruption” in Ukraine and had nothing to do with the fantastical server heist.

Mick Mulvaney tries to put the truth-paste back into the tube

Remember that the Mueller report concluded that Russian operatives did, in fact, hack a DNC server to gain information that might be helpful to Trump’s election. Trump is still so undone by this now-obvious truth that he seems determined to disprove it and has become obsessed with the conspiracy that the server somehow ended up in Ukraine and contains evidence that there was no hacking by the Russians. Even though the special counsel also concluded that there was no coordination between the Trump campaign and Russian operatives, the president seemingly has a desperate need to prove that he won by his own genius.

“I want to see the server,” he told reporters in the White House last Wednesday. “I think it’s very important for this country to see the server.” Really? I have bad news for the president: The idea even that a single server exists — and can be hidden somewhere — is ludicrous. Nowadays, a “server” is actually dozens of different interconnected systems.

In other words, Trump has risked everything, inviting impeachment, to prove that he won fair and square. His Ukraine parry was a matter not of national security but of ego. Trump's need for reassurance and public validation is so consuming that he’s apparently blind to consequences, never more obvious than his recent dealings with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, which led to Turkey’s invasion of northern Syria. In that case, however, people — not reputations — died. What part Trump’s ego played in that transaction hasn’t been discovered yet, but Utah Sen. Mitt Romney’s theory that Erdogan issued an ultimatum and Trump caved may be getting warm.

Before we leave the subject of the 2016, election, let’s be very clear: Trump didn’t win so much as the Democrats lost. And, if they’re not very careful starting immediately — that is, if they don’t stop sounding like aliens whose implanted data receivers haven’t yet mastered the code for “Mainstream America” — they could lose again.

Mulvaney’s stab at survival, meanwhile, may have been a smart move. A wise friend once told me: “Always tell the truth as soon as possible.” You may not win friends; you may sacrifice something wanted. But over time, lies will consume the liar, make you crazy, and paranoia usually follows. Mulvaney may lose his job over the truth — the bus under which so many have been cast sits idling outside the West Wing — and it calls for thee.

Granted, he might have skipped his other lines about “Get over it” and “We do that all the time,” but he must feel that a weight has been lifted. Mulvaney, at least, will enjoy an afterlife beyond the White House. As for Trump, his paranoia expands with his prevarications. By The Washington Post’s Fact Checker’s count as of Oct. 9, the president had made 13,435 false or misleading claims since taking office.

If truth ever does slip off his tongue, Congress will have to declare a national holiday.

Kathleen Parker is a columnist who writes for The Washington Post.

"Lock him up!": Opposition to Donald Trump must be strategic - an apologist's point of view is ineffective

Let's face it.  The spoof on Trump was staged to be a "made for TV moment".  But, it backfired!  At the end of the third inning, Trump stood and waved to the crowd, and the ballpark video screens carried a salute to U.S. service members that drew cheers throughout the stadium. But, when the video on the Jumbotron cut to Trump and his entourage — which included a number of GOP lawmakers — and the loudspeakers announced the Trumps, cheers abruptly turned into a torrent of boos and heckling from what sounded like a majority of the crowd. Chants of "Lock him up!" broke out in some sections, including one below where the president was sitting.

Baseball fans booed Trump at the World Series game!

This apologist's essay by John Krull* is not strategic or effective.  

His argument just won't work!

Americans can't ignore Donald Trump's disregard for American values and the wrecking ball he has been to our national pride.  Sure, it's nice to know that John Krull agrees about the Trump impeachment proceedings. Moreover, Americans agree with Krull abut wanting to respect the office of the President of the United States. Nevertheless, the current person who claims the position must go and Krull's apologist argument is ineffective in reaching that goal. 

Donald Trump must face an impeachment trial. 

Echo opinion published in the The Goshen News- an Indiana newspaper.

KRULL-  When the announcer at the World Series game between the Houston Astros and the Washington Nationals introduced the president of the United States, the crowd booed. The people gathered for the peak event of the nation’s pastime booed for a long time.

They chanted, “Lock him up!”https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/455874-lock-her-up-chant-breaks-out-at-trump-rally
They chanted, “Impeach him!”

There are those out there, I suppose, who will argue that this is just a case of rough-and-tumble justice, of turnabout being fair play.

(Maine Writer- I am so pleased for Hillary Clinton to hear the crowds and to see how the evil Donald Trump responded!)
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/trump-booed-world-series-lock-him-up-chant-break-out-during-game-5-washington-nationals-stadium-pa/
Donald Trump, after all, is the man who gloried in inciting crowds to chant “Lock her up!” at his rallies, even after he’d defeated Democrat Hillary Clinton in the 2016 election, and he had taken up residence in the Oval Office. He also is the man who takes glee in degrading or demeaning anyone who has the audacity to disagree with or question him by foisting dismissive and insulting nicknames on them.

The thinking goes that what’s good for the goose is good for the gander.

I can see the appeal of this “he-did-it-so-I-can-too” kind of thinking. Anyone who has ever been 3 years old has thought that way. Most of us grow out of it.

Or maybe just some of us.

Don’t count me as part of the crew that thinks it’s OK to boo the president.  (Maine Writer - AlthoughI appreciate this point of view, it is also a weak apologist's argument....IMO!)

It’s not that I have any great affection or sympathy for Donald Trump.

I support his impeachment because it’s a step in the process of determining whether he has broken our nation’s laws and violated his oath of office. The trial in the U.S. Senate, where his party has a comfortable majority, can settle the questions of “due process” the president and his followers raise with regularity and with little basis in fact, law or history.

Because his party does have the majority in the Senate, Trump will have all the advocates and defenders he needs to see that his rights and prerogatives are preserved.

So, if I support impeachment, why does the booing of the president at the World Series bother me?

Because it’s crass. (HELLO? Donald Trump himself is crass!)

"Hollywood Access transcipt excerpt:  Trump- "I moved on her actually. You know she was down on Palm Beach. I moved on her and I failed. I’ll admit it. I did try and fuck her. She was married. And I moved on her very heavily. In fact, I took her out furniture shopping. She wanted to get some furniture. I said, ‘I’ll show you where they have some nice furniture.’ I took her out furniture– I moved on her like a bitch, but I couldn’t get there. And she was married. Then all of a sudden I see her, she’s now got the big phony tits and everything.  I just start kissing them. It’s like a magnet. I just kiss. I don’t even wait. And when you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything."

Moreover, Krull goes on to docment the obvious.  Booing Trump shows disrespect to the office. (Yet, Donald Trump violates his oath of office!)

Worse, it’s disrespectful to the nation itself. (To the contrary, the opportunity to excercise free speech is a tribute to the nation itself.)

And it’s one more sign that Donald Trump is “winning.”

He’s dragging more and more of the country — more and more of our fellow citizens — down to his level.

This is wrong for at least two reasons.

The most practical of those reasons is also the least important. Donald Trump wants to degrade our national dialogue because he operates better in the muck than anyone else does. In a contest of moral and ethical limbo, no one will beat him because the few people who are willing to go as low as he is are nowhere near as skilled at invective as he is.

In a race through the sewer, he always will win.

But there’s another, larger reason.

This just shouldn’t be who we are.

Years ago, when I was executive director of what is now the American Civil Liberties Union of Indiana, people — members, volunteers — sometimes would argue with me that we should fight fire with fire. The fact that folks on the other side deliberately would mischaracterize or even lie about what our positions were or question our love of country and family would enrage many in our camp. They said we should be just as nasty in return. (Maine Writer- An apologist point of view rarely makes progress.)

The other side’s tactics angered me, too.

But I counseled then — and I still believe today — that we shouldn’t let the lowest common denominator set the standard for conduct. The principles we were defending were designed to liberate the human spirit. If we stood for anything, it was that people should be free to discover the best in themselves.

Not the worst.

It wasn’t a victory, I said, for us to become the mirror image of that which we oppose.

But that’s what we’re letting Donald Trump do to our country.

To us.

The presidency is more than the person who occupies the office.

We need to remember that. (Maine Writer- In all due respect, Donald Trump did not become POS with a majority vote. He is even violating the very Constitutional system that got him into the Oval Office, in the first place.)

Maine Writer - Although it's laudatory to want to rise up to the challenge of going high when Trump goes low, the reality show failed celeb who is polluting the Oval Office goes so low, that it's really not too difficult to go higher than his low. But, we cannot let Trump get away with gutter politics. Apoligist arguments are useless.

*John Krull is director of Franklin College’s Pulliam School of Journalism and publisher of TheStatehouseFile.com, a news website powered by Franklin College journalism students.