Trump's Republic Of Mendacity

Trump is has been spending the 4th of July holiday with his divisive hate politics and doing what he does best: lying. Biden... hides out, hoping Trump keeps destroying himself and that no one pays any attention to him or his record. This may not be a great idea, since Trump will through tens of millions of dollars at him as we get closer to November. But instead of these two clowns, imagine if Bernie were a candidate. U like either of them, he's all about problem solving and policy solutions, sometimes grand-- like eliminating poverty-- and sometimes more mundane-- like making airlines behave so we're not taking our lives into our hands by getting on one. This is the letter he sent to the head of the Department of Transportation on Friday:

Basically he wants the government-- not the greed-driven airline companies (especially not American Airlines, the greediest ofthem all and the least concerned about the health of their customers)-- to require face masks for passengers and crew, to limit the capacity of flights (reasonable social distancing) and more cleaning during the pandemic.

Meanwhile, Louis Menand, over at the New Yorker had some fantastic insights into what Señor Trumpanzee has been up to. "Today," he wrote yesterday, "is the two hundred and forty-fourth anniversary of our declaration of independence from Britain, and we find ourselves living in a republic of mendacity. The falsehoods never stop. No occasion is too minor. 'Pres. Obama destroyed the lobster and fishing industry in Maine. Now it’s back, bigger and better than anyone ever thought possible. Enjoy your lobstering and fishing! Make lots of money!' So tweeted the President on June 24th. As the Boston Globe and other news organizations have reported, the tweet is a lobster fib. Not that President Obama needs to get credit for it-- climate change, driving the lobsters north, was probably the reason-- but, in 2016, the last year of the Obama Administration, the Maine lobster catch was the biggest in history, a hundred and thirty-two million pounds. Since then, it has fallen by thirty-two million pounds, largely because of the Trump Administration’s trade war with China, which caused certain American agricultural exports, including lobsters, to be hit with a thirty-five-per-cent tariff. China is not in a trade war with Canada, however, and Canadian lobster harvesters have stepped into the market. Over all, the value of the fishing catch in Maine, all species included, has dropped from seven hundred and thirty-three million dollars in 2016 (also a record) to six hundred and seventy-three million in 2019.

If lobstering is (or may be) “back,” it is because of a recent White House directive to extend funds from the cares Act-- the pandemic bailout-- to the lobster industry, which had previously been left off the list of most-favored businesses. Observers note that a Maine Senate race is under way. The Republican standing for reëlection is Susan Collins. Senator Collins has become the kind of senator the Republicans need. She stages a mini-drama of conscience before every controversial vote, and then ends up voting, most of the time, with her party. The Republicans want to keep her in office. As always, the Administration is directing its attention and taxpayer-funded largesse to whatever pays politically. How else would it operate? It has no other principles to guide it.

Lobster fishing is a niche industry. About fifteen thousand people in Maine make their living harvesting lobsters. And the lobster tweet is a relatively benign lie, more in the braggadocio category. But why insist on lying? Why lie even when the truth-- “We looked strongly into extending the cares Act to Maine’s beautiful lobstermen!”-- does the job perfectly well?

Speculation about this began on January 21, 2017, and it has not abated. One theory that has a certain elegance and simplicity is that Trump is a nitwit. Most of the time, he has no idea what he is talking about, and so he does what he has done all his life: he says whatever makes him look best. The kindest interpretation is that this is just good salesmanship. You always hype the product, and, in this case, the product is him. He is not exaggerating the truth-- he is not even lying, technically-- because he doesn’t know what the truth is. He assumes that the biggest whopper is the safest bet. Someone else can clean up the mess.

And the thing is, there always is someone else. It’s not hard to understand Trump. It is hard to understand the people in his Administration who enable the blather and the misinformation, who spin-cycle it to bleach out the most offensive or dangerous implications, and who parrot it dutifully. For the first two years of Trump’s Presidency, some of these people were known as “the adults in the room.” To an admittedly remote observer, those people looked indistinguishable from opportunists willing to suppress their opinions in the hopes of becoming Presidential puppet masters. They were dreaming. All of them have departed with their reputations scarred.

No one will die because of Trump’s lobster tweet. But the stuff he makes up about the coronavirus is killing people. Those at risk are not limited to the small band who showed up in Tulsa. They are people in nursing homes and veterans’ hospitals; people with diabetes and heart conditions; people on Native American lands; people who will lose their jobs if they do not show up for work in spite of the danger to their health; people who may not think about Donald Trump from one end of the year to the next but who live in states whose governors, for fear of White House vilification, have adopted a policy of pandemic bravado, as though by putting on a big hat you can face down a pathogen.

Now those states are being ripped apart, and that is likely to restart the spread of the virus in states that have successfully flattened their curves. If that happens, the whole spring shutdown, with its economic pain unevenly distributed-- as everything in the United States now is unevenly distributed-- will have been wasted. The United States has a higher coronavirus mortality rate than Brazil. A quarter of the world’s covid-19 deaths have already happened here, in a country that has 4.25 per cent of the world’s population. And we are not nearly finished.

What is appalling is that this was predictable. A man who is incapable of not making things up about the crowd size at his Inauguration is not going to start suddenly caring about the science when he is confronted with a disease that he knows nothing about. He’s going to do what he has always done.

When Trump said, on March 6th, that he did not want sick passengers on a cruise ship brought ashore because it would raise the number of cases in the U.S., making him look bad, it was clear where this was headed. Republican senators knew it; Republican governors knew it; Vice-President Mike Pence and Secretary of Health and Human Services Alex Azar knew it. But they let Trump dominate the Administration’s airtime on the pandemic and, when they finally talked him off the stage, they allowed him to put on a display of petulance that continues to suck up most of the coverage, and to undercut any governor who tried to shoulder a responsibility he has washed his hands of.

The federal government is not supposed to work this way. Its officials are not supposed to punt because the head of state is not up to the job. They are supposed to put aside political interests to attend to the public welfare. It is not as though there has been much leadership on the Democratic side, either. Congress gave the Administration a trillion dollars, with virtually no strings attached, to hand out as it saw fit, and it sent nearly $1.4 billion of it to dead people.

It is to the credit of the press that, even with silly tweets like the lobster fib, it holds Trump to account-- not that this has the slightest effect on him or the sanitation crew that cleans up after him. But the press cannot set guidelines, or distribute face masks, or perform testing, or do contact tracing. The public looks to government, Thomas Jefferson wrote in the Declaration, to insure its “Safety and Happiness.” We can guess what he would make of the current one.

Trump's Filthy, Unhealthy Properties Are About To Get Filthier And Less Healthy

Trump is a danger to public health... I think we all know that already. But so are his various businesses. Trump's hotels, restaurants and resorts are frequently cited for health and safety violations-- rodent droppings, cockroaches, mice,  filth, unsanitary conditions, feces everywhere, bed bugs. Examples:

• In 1988, Trump was fined $300 by the City of New York for a sidewalk shed outside Trump Tower that was not up to code.
• In 2003, the Trump organization was cited by the New York City Department of Buildings for failure to maintain an elevator.
• In 2004, Trump Palace was fined $105 by the City of New York for possessing unregistered fuel burning equipment. According to city data, Trump has not yet paid this ticket.
• In 2009, the Trump Organization was fined $500 by the New York City Department of Buildings for failing to maintain Trump Tower to code.
• In 2010, the Trump Organization was fined $250 by the New York City Department of Buildings for failing to maintain Trump Tower to code.
• In 2011, the Trump Organization was fined $250 by the New York City Department of Buildings for failing to maintain Trump Tower to code.
• In 2012, Trump’s Trump International Hotel and Tower in Chicago was fined $46,000 by the EPA for environmental damage.
• In 2013, Trump Soho was fined $3,950 by the City of New York for failing to submit four annual tests for backflow preventers-- a violation of New York’s water code. With interest, Trump now owes the city $5,389.05 in unpaid fines on this violation.
• In 2014, Trump Cafe and Grill in Trump Tower was cited for 9 health violations-- 6 of them deemed “critical”-- including filth flies, dirty food-contact surfaces, and cold food stored at an improper temperature.
• In 2014, Trump Bar in Trump Tower was cited for 4 health violations-- 3 of them deemed “critical”-- for adulterated food, dirty food contact surfaces and cold food stored at an improper temperature.
• In 2015, Trump Park Avenue was fined $125 by the City of New York for failing to prevent unnecessary fire alarms-- a violation of New York’s fire code. Trump has not paid the ticket, and with interest he currently owes the city $144.29
• In 2015, Trump Cafe and Grill in Trump Tower was cited for 9 health violations-- 6 of them deemed “critical”-- including dirty food-contact surfaces, dirty wiping cloths, and cold food stored at an improper temperature.
• In 2015, Trump Bar in Trump Tower was cited for 2 health violations-- 1 of them deemed “critical”-- for dirty food contact surfaces.
• In 2015, the kitchen at Trump Soho was cited for 2 health violations-- one of them deemed “critical”-- for improperly stored sanitized equipment.
• In 2015, the Trump Golf Links at Ferry Point was cited for 8 health violations-- 4 of them deemed “critical”-- including filth flies.
• In 2016, Trump criticized the Colorado Springs Fire Department for enforcing the fire code at one of his campaign rallies.
• In 2016, Trump Winery was fined $250 by Arizona officials for failing to comply with the state’s shipping regulations.
• In 2016, Trump Cafe and Grill in Trump Tower was cited for 5 health violations-- three of them deemed “critical”-- including live roaches and cold food stored at an improper temperature. • In 2016, Trump Bar in Trump Tower was cited for 2 health violations-- 1 of them deemed “critical”-- for dirty food-contact surfaces.
• In 2016, the kitchen at Trump Soho was cited for 2 “non-critical” health violations.
• In 2016, the Trump Golf Links at Ferry Point was cited for 2 health violations, 1 of them deemed “critical.”
• In 2017, Trump’s restaurant at Mar-a-Lago was cited for 13 health violations, including undercooked fish and hot raw meat-- just days before Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe had dinner there. The inspection brought the clubhouse to a combined 78 health violations in just 3 years.
• In 2017, Trump Cafe and Grill in Trump Tower was cited for 6 health violations-- 2 of them deemed “critical”-- for the presence of filth flies and hot food stored at an improper temperature.
• In 2017, Trump Bar in Trump Tower was cited for 3 health violations-- 1 of them deemed “critical”-- for the presence of filth flies.
• In 2017, the kitchen at Trump Soho was cited for 3 health violations-- 1 of them deemed “critical”-- for the presence of mice.
• In 2017, the Trump Golf Links at Ferry Point were cited for 4 health violations-- 3 of them critical-- including the lack of a food protection certificate.

Meanwhile the lies are unending, even as they endanger the health of Americans coast to coast. There's never been anyone in the White House like Trump before-- and, hopefully, there never will be again. Have American voters learned a lesson? I wish I could answer that affirmatively.

Trump's businesses have always cut corners and gotten by with the cheapest, meanest efforts at superficial cleanliness in the entire hospitality industry. There are reasons why Trump has used his first term to try to obliterate regulations that keep the public safe from unscrupulous businessmen like himself. But all this is about to get much worse as the war on coronavirus comes to Trump properties. Ben Protess, Steve Eder and Eric Lipton reported for the New York Times how "health restrictions have led to cutbacks at hotels and golf courses. But the swimming pool remains open at a Florida resort, and a New York golf course offers 'fresh air' without caddies." The Trump Organziation's already filthy kitchens, restrooms, hotel rooms, etc are about to become much filthier and much more unhealthy as Trump lays off cleaning staff everywhere.

Reeling from the global fallout of the coronavirus pandemic, President Trump’s family business has cut back hotel operations, closed some golf courses and restaurants and shed dozens of workers-- all while pushing to keep other properties open and promote them on social media.

In recent days, the Trump Organization cut staff from hotels in New York and Washington, halted new reservations at a hotel overlooking the Las Vegas Strip and closed golf courses in Los Angeles and the Miami area, according to people with knowledge of the matter. It also closed the Mar-a-Lago club in Florida, which normally would be at a peak right now, with regular seasonal visits by Mr. Trump himself.

The cutbacks, expected to continue in coming days, were a last resort, a company executive said, as the priority had been keeping thousands of employees and contract workers on the job. The company has a portfolio of more than a dozen golf clubs and at least partially owns or operates five-star hotels in Chicago, Hawaii, Las Vegas, New York, Vancouver and Washington, as well as Ireland and Scotland.

Generally, the company has folded the tent only when local authorities mandated it, despite a growing national urgency to limit social gatherings and close nonessential businesses. In an interview, Eric Trump, the president’s son who manages the family business, said the company was trying to limit shutdowns.

“As an organization we are following federal, state and local direction and guidance very carefully,” he said.

For those properties that remain open, the company has continued promotional campaigns on social media and through direct email.

On Friday morning, Trump Golf Links at Ferry Point, a public course in the Bronx, invited guests on Twitter to play a round: “Looking to get some #freshair? The golf course is a great place to relieve stress and exercise social distancing #openingday.”

Similarly, the president’s golf club in Hudson Valley, N.Y., was closed for the winter season but opened its course to members on Wednesday as a sort of cure for cabin fever, according to an email reviewed by the New York Times.

“Governor Cuomo has recommended that we use public spaces and parks for exercise and relaxation,” the club said in the email to members. “With this in mind, we are opening the golf course to give you an opportunity to get out of the house and enjoy the great outdoors!”

...For now, the president’s company has continued to accept new reservations at its hotels in Chicago and on Central Park West in New York. But the New York hotel is shedding staff, laying off 40 employees so far, and reducing the hours of others, according to a person familiar with the matter.

In a letter to owners of hotel units in the building on Thursday, Matthew Vandegrift, general manager of the property, called it an “unprecedented event” and warned of a “significant shortfall in revenues.”

“While we recognize that hope is not a strategy, I can assure you we are thoroughly analyzing expenses,” Mr. Vandegrift wrote, in the letter obtained by The Times. “Strategies have been deployed to mitigate the expected financial losses as a result of COVID-19.”

Also this week, the Trump Organization shuttered most amenities inside its Washington hotel-- the restaurant, bar and spa-- to comply with a local order. Ordinarily a magnet for Republican officials and lobbyists, the property was turning away anyone without a room key or a reservation on Wednesday.

Mickael Damelincourt, the managing director, posted a message on Twitter showing the hotel’s empty lobby. “A sleepy America’s Living Room... Ready to rebound bigger than ever... Be safe everyone!!!” he wrote.

The hotel has roughly 5 percent occupancy, and 95 percent of the staff is not working at the moment, according to John Boardman, the executive secretary-treasurer of Unite Here Local 25, a union with 174 workers at the hotel. He called it a “real skeleton staff” in the same predicament as other nearby hotels. The union is negotiating benefits for displaced workers with the Trump hotel and others.

“The industry is devastated,” Mr. Boardman said. “It is devastated in the near term, and what we are starting to see is a round of longer-term cancellations as the uncertainty increases. We are not expecting people to be called back to work any time soon.”

Over the past week, several Trump businesses, on their various social media accounts, gave little sense that something was amiss. The Doral resort near Miami suggested a Friday the 13th game of golf and a round of drinks at the bar. On Monday, the Westchester, N.Y., golf club showed off its 101-foot waterfall. And on Sunday, the Washington hotel invited guests to join in for “Dessert Night” on Fridays.

But by Wednesday morning, many of the accounts posted an American flag and a variation of a message sending well wishes to patrons during “these uncertain times.”

As recently as last Saturday morning, the Trump golf club in Bedminster, N.J., e notified members of plans to “remain open,” adding, “We hope that you and your families will continue to see it as a place where you can relax and enjoy the terrific weather we’re having before spring has even started,” an email reviewed by The Times said.

That night, the club hosted a private party, a person with knowledge of the gathering said.

But after Gov. Philip D. Murphy of New Jersey instituted various restrictions on recreational businesses, the club notified its members on Tuesday that although they could still play golf, there would be no caddies, or pretty much any other services. “Wash your hands!” the email exhorted.

The president’s Mar-a-Lago club was the site of events earlier in March that included several people who have since been confirmed to have coronavirus, including two Brazilian officials who accompanied President Jair Bolsonaro of Brazil to a dinner with Mr. Trump at the resort on March 7.

Last week, The Trump Organization sent out a notice to Mar-a-Lago members notifying them that the club would be cleaned on Monday but remain open the rest of the week.

Now, the club has closed, at least temporarily, based on calls for social distancing.

Not far away, at the golf resort in Doral, another of Mr. Trump’s highest-profile properties, the company was still accepting new reservations on Friday, though it had shut down its courses and restaurants. Still, according to a hotel employee, the family pool remained open.

Almost All Of Our Politicians Lie To Us With Alacrity... Which Is Why Bernie Is So Loved Even By People Who Don't Agree With All His Policies

Yesterday in this time slot, we looked at one of the Bloomberg lies from the last debate: "All of the new Democrats that came in and put Nancy Pelosi in charge and gave the Congress the ability to control this president, I bough... I, I got them." It wasn't just the oligrachal hurbris of the word "bought." The word "all" wasn't close to a factual description. "Some" would have been more appropriate and a recognition that he was part of a team-- not even the leader of the team-- might have shown a little

a- humility
b- connection to reality

People create their own narratives, sometimes by exaggeration, sometimes out of wishful thinking, sometimes out of thin air, sometimes, in later life, due to the onset of senility. Chief executives-- particularly in business, but increasingly in politics-- do this is a matter of course. And no one challenges them. That's why CEOs are unfit for public office. Trump and Bloomberg are both absolutely perfect examples. Let me come back to Trump, the world's biggest public liar, in a moment. First a tangent to the fuzzy and deteriorating world of Status Quo Joe. Jonathan Turley explained Biden's latest big lie-- about how he was arrested in South Africa fighting to free Nelson Mandela. (If Biden could dance like these guys, I'd stop writing about what a monster he is. He'd still be a monster; I'd just stop writing about it.)





As you read this, keep in mind that Biden's early career was premised on only one thing: showing Delaware racists how he would fight against integration by derailing busing. Turley on the eve of the South Carolina primary where Biden's entire political career now rests on the shoulders of elderly, largely rural African American voters:

After weeks of confusion, Joe Biden’s campaign have finally admitted that he was not arrested while visiting Nelson Mandela. Biden has made some false claims in the past but this was particularly bizarre. No one had any record of such a historic arrest in South Africa. While Biden did not take responsibility personally for the exaggeration, his deputy campaign manager admitted today that Biden was not arrested but merely “separated from his party at the airport.” That is a bit of a nose bleed of a step down from an arrest with Mandela to an airport separation. Hard to imagine how you confuse the two since one ordinarily involves custody, cuffs, and confinement.

The claim of the arrest was viewed as a pitch to help Biden’s campaign in South Carolina but was widely ridiculed. The problem is that Biden identified his own witness in his account by noting that “I had the great honor of being arrested with our U.N. ambassador on the streets of Soweto trying to get to see [Mandela] on Robben Island.”

However, Andrew Young, who was the U.N. Ambassador at the time, stated “No, I was never arrested and I don’t think he was, either.”

The campaign then tried to explain but only made the claim more offensive that Biden would suggest that he was arrested in South Africa during apartheid: “It was a separation. They, he was not allowed to go through the same door that the-- the rest of the party he was with. Obviously, it was apartheid South Africa. There was a white door, there was a black door. He did not want to go through the white door and have the rest of the party go through the black door. He was separated. This was during a trip while they were there in Johannesburg.”

So Biden remembers separation in going through an airport door as an arrest in the cause of freeing Mandela in South Africa?

Biden has been challenged about past statements like his claiming that he Biden had traveled to Konar province in Afghanistan to give a Silver Star on a Navy captain who refused the medal, because his friend didn’t survive. The Washington Post reported that it “never happened” and said “as he campaigns for president, Joe Biden tells a moving but false war story.”

Biden was also recently challenged for saying that Biden he worked on the Paris Climate Accord with former Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping, who died 19 years before the agreement was signed.

This story however is even more insulting to those who honor the memory of Mandela. It is akin to claiming to have marched with Dr. King because you walked through an airport with him on one occasion. There is a big difference between being separated at an airport and being arrested in South Africa in the same cause as Nelson Mandela.

Yet, it is notable that CNN spent exclusive coverage on “how important is the endorsement of Rep. James Clyburn” to Biden in South Carolina rather than this astonishing claim and belated admission about Nelson Mandela.

Where do you even start with Trump? By now we all know they every word out of his face is a self-serving lie, right? Well... depends how you define "we." This should be self-explanatory-- if you click on it and blow it up so it's legible:

Basically 32% are not part of "we." For one reason or another-- my guess is IQ-- they're going to follow Trump right into the jaws of the pandemic. Remember what I said about thinning the herd yesterday? I know it's horrible and cruel but that 32% is what I was talking about.

Biden Isn't As Bad As Trump

Trump's family is more disgusting and more crooked than Biden's. Trump is a bigger liar than Biden. Trump seems more senile and off the rails than Biden. Trump is more corrupt then Biden. Trump is more in the pocket of the ruling elite than Biden. Trump is more racist than Biden. But Biden being less horrible than Trump could give us the second worst president in history. The bar is too low. After someone as bad as Trump, America needs someone as great as he is horrid, not someone not quote as bad.





Last week, In These Times published a piece by Branko Marcetic, In His Lies, Joe Biden Is Sounding a Lot Like Trump, concentrating on all the lying. Remember, Politifact, rates the two of them as monstrous liars, each unworthy of public trust and unfit for public office. Trump is worse. Biden is still absolutely horrible and vile. These are the charts of two sickening liars:

Marcetic wrote that "The media, academics, institutions and other prominent individuals have charged that this “post-truth” politics is “dangerous,” rewiring our brains, leading to creeping fascism, and corroding, subverting, and otherwise threatening democracy." As Eugene Robinson pointed out in the Washington Post in October, "Trump’s constant, relentless, remorseless lying is a central feature of his presidency, an unprecedented threat to our democracy and-- in my view-- an impeachable offense. I realize it does not qualify as news that Trump lies all the time. I also realize it is not always possible to draw a bright line between untruths Trump knows are untrue and conspiratorial nonsense he might foolishly believe. But never before have we had a leader who so pollutes the national discourse with garbage that he at least ought to know is false-- and I fear the consequences will be with us long after Trump is gone... When Trump insists on his own invented “facts,” he makes reality-based political dialogue impossible. His utter disregard for truth is a subversion of our democracy and a dereliction of his duty as president. The founders considered themselves men of honor whose word was their bond. They left us the vague, encompassing phrase 'high crimes and misdemeanors' for just such an emergency."

Biden isn't quite that bad. But still bad... really bad. Marcetic asserts that "it’s safe to say that Trump’s mendacity is a large part of the reason many Democratic voters are putting their faith in Biden to unseat the president this year. Yet as Tuesday night’s debate showed, playing unabashedly fast and loose with the facts is one of the very things Biden shares with Trump."

Tuesday’s debate saw yet another instance of Biden being confronted about his role in leading the country to war in Iraq, and choosing to lie about it.

“It was a mistake to trust that they weren’t going to go to war,” he said in relation to his October 2002 vote to authorize the war. “They said they were not going to war … The world, in fact, voted to send inspectors in and they still went to war. From that point on, I was in the position of making the case that it was a big, big mistake and from that point on, I moved to bring those troops home.”

As fact-checkers have pointed out repeatedly, and as I detailed multiple times for In These Times, almost every part of this statement is a lie. Biden knew George W. Bush’s ultimate goal was regime change because he himself spoke openly about the need to remove dictator Saddam Hussein from power as early as February 2002. By June of that year, when asked about a leaked White House directive for the CIA to help capture and kill Saddam, Biden gave it his nod of approval on CBS’s Face the Nation and said that “if the covert action doesn't work, we'd better be prepared to move forward with another action, an overt action,” which the Associated Press reported as an endorsement of an invasion. That month, Biden’s aides told Roll Call that the then-senator had told Bush he supported regime change in Iraq.

The next month, Biden said on Fox News Sunday that Bush would have the authority to pre-emptively invade Iraq if it was revealed that Saddam was in league in al-Qaeda-- “justifiably given the case being made,” as he put it. And after voting to authorize the invasion, Biden embarked on a world tour to drum up support for the impending war, traveling to neighboring Jordan, Israel, Qatar and even to Kurdish-run northern Iraq, speaking to the Kurd parliament and assuring them the United States would stand with them.

Once the Iraq war began, far from “making the case that it was a big, big mistake,” Biden remained perhaps its most implacable cheerleader, even as the rest of the Democratic Party rapidly turned against it. Biden insisted in July 2003 that he would “vote to do it again,” referring to the invasion of Iraq, told the Brookings Institution that “Iraq was a problem that had to be dealt with sooner rather than later,” and flatly replied “No” when asked if Howard Dean’s steadfastly anti-war views should become the consensus of the Democratic Party. Instead of moving to bring the troops home, in August, Biden called for an infusion of 20,000-50,000 more U.S. soldiers into the country.

Indeed, Biden held his pro-war attitude all the way through 2004 and that year’s presidential election. At the Democratic convention, he told the Pennsylvania delegation that Bush’s only “mistakes” were sending too few troops into Iraq and the administration’s poor planning for reconstruction, warning the delegation not to focus too much on Bush’s blunders lest Democrats “begin sounding like we’re rooting for failure.” As Democratic candidate John Kerry’s foreign policy advisor, Biden vowed to both party members and those watching at home that Kerry would “not hesitate to unleash the unparalleled power of our military-- on any nation or group that does us harm-- without asking anyone’s permission.”

As Bernie Sanders’ campaign assailed Biden for his role in the war ahead of Tuesday’s debate, Kerry, who has endorsed Biden and is now a campaign surrogate, returned the favor, lying about Biden’s record. Kerry has said that the October 2002 vote “didn’t mean you were in favor when the administration made the decision of actually going to war.”

This statement doesn’t square with Biden’s March 2003 vote for a Senate resolution backing Bush’s decision to go to war, or Biden’s words just days before the invasion: “I support the president. Diplomacy over avoiding war is dead,” and “Let loose the dogs of war. I’m confident we will win.” Nor does it square with Biden’s March 9, 2003 op-ed for the Wilmington, Delaware News Journal, which began: “I happen to think we will go to war with Iraq. And I happen to think the military phase will go relatively well. It’s a war that is justified.” Nevertheless, Kerry has insisted that “Bernie is regrettably distorting Joe’s record,” and that “Joe spoke out and criticized, Joe was against what they were doing.”

This pattern of dishonesty is nothing new. Biden has come under criticism during the campaign for repeatedly telling a moving war story that never actually happened, at one point telling his audience it was “the God’s truth” and they had his “word as a Biden.” Last year, his campaign made headlines when several passages from Biden’s climate plan turned out to be plagiarized. The candidate has also revived an old lie for this election, telling crowds that he had “come out of the civil rights movement,” and that he had “got involved in the civil rights movement as a kid.”

What’s notable about this particular lie is that it was one of the things that had ended Biden’s election hopes back in 1987. Though that presidential campaign had largely gone down in flames over a separate plagiarism scandal, it had also died a death by a thousand cuts over a series of other revelations calling into question Biden’s honesty.

One of these revelations concerned Biden’s frequent allusions to his supposed civil rights and anti-war activism, deployed particularly-- though not exclusively-- during his years opposing busing. In one Senate hearing, he told the former president of San Francisco State College that he had been a student demonstrator, and he had said during the campaign that “we marched to change attitudes” during the 1960s.

Reporters soon poked holes in the story, and Biden was forced to admit that “I was never an activist,” and that “the civil rights movement was an awakening for me, not as a consequence of my participation but as a consequence of my being made aware of what was happening.” Bobbie Greene McCarthy, a friend of Biden, told the media Biden had been “for a long time pretty much a supporter” of the Vietnam War, and Biden admitted that “by the time the war movement was at its peak, I was married. I was in law school. I wore sports coats,” and so not involved in such activism. He was, he explained, “a middle-class guy” and “not big on flak jackets and tie-dye shirts.”

In other words, both in Tuesday’s debate and beyond, Biden has exhibited the same kind of disregard for the truth as Trump. And this is far from the only characteristic they share.

Many liberals have despaired at the way Trump’s insults and coarse language have disrespected the office of the presidency, and more generally dragged political discourse into the gutter. Yet in December 2019, a crowd of Biden supporters clapped and cheered as the former vice president responded to a critical question from a voter about his son’s dealings in Ukraine by challenging the man to a push-up contest and an IQ test, before calling him fat. (The campaign later tried to claim Biden had said, “Look, facts”).

Democrats have rightly criticized Trump’s flouting of the rule of law, particularly his calls for his former White House counsel to ignore a Congressional subpoena. Yet Biden initially said he would similarly defy a Republican subpoena to attend Trump’s Senate impeachment trial. Much outrage has greeted the way Trump and his family have profited from his presidency. Yet Biden’s family has long profited from his political career, from his earliest days in the Senate to his final days in the White House. This mixing of family business-dealing and politics ultimately helped embroil Biden in a long-running scandal of his own.

A Biden nomination and (and presumptive victory in November) is still viewed by many Democratic voters as a way to rescue the country from the dishonesty of Trumpism. But it may be time to ask if it would instead simply usher in another version of it.

How Dangerous To National Security Are Trump's Daily Flood Of Lies?

Sometimes I check Google for my least favorite Members of Congress to see what they've been up to. That's how I learned, for example, that New Jersey Blue Dog Jefferson Van Drew went on Fox News a few days ago to say Trump's impeachment is "like something you would see in Europe or third-world nations" and to read Republican Party talking points. (Now Trump tweets nice things about him now and I have a feeling in my gut that he'll soon be switching parties like so many Blue Dogs have in the past.)

But most of the villains are just playing low and trying to not draw any attention to themselves. Many are just there to collect their corporate bribes, vote for their paymasters and hope their constituents never figure out what's up. So they kick back under the back benches and never say "Boo!" Look at these half dozen Google searches, all for Democrats who have earned "F" scores from ProgressivePunch:

Trump, on the other hand, has the opposite kind of narrative. A malignant narcissist, he is a firm believer that the only bad news is no news. He's out hogging the cameras constantly. And what he does most of the time is gaslight and lie. Have you forgotten what gaslighting is?

Yesterday, Trump decided the Fox & Friends audience needed a little gaslighting so he called in and stayed on their air for 53 minutes, riffing and gaslighting. He pretty much ignored the show's imbecile hosts. Daniel Dale counted 18 lies

A factory in Texas

Trump said, "I just got back from Austin, Texas, where I was with Tim Cook. He's going to be building a $1 billion facility to make whatever he makes. You know, that's Apple. And he's gonna build this incredible facility. We toured another facility where they make the Mac Pro, which is phenomenal, which was opening-- the reason we, you know-- it opened that day."

Facts First: The plant Trump visited did not open that day. The Flex Ltd. facility has been making Apple's Mac Pro computers since 2013.

Apple did break ground that day on a $1 billion campus in Austin, about a mile from the plant Trump toured with Cook, but no manufacturing is expected to be done at the campus. You can read a full fact check here.

The Ukraine scandal and impeachment

CrowdStrike

Trump said that Democrats gave a computer server that was hacked in 2016 to "a company owned by a very wealthy Ukrainian."

Facts First: The cybersecurity company that investigated the hack, CrowdStrike, is a publicly traded American company co-founded by Dmitri Alperovitch, an American citizen who was born in Russia, not Ukraine. Regardless, such firms do not typically take possession of physical servers to conduct their analysis.

Asked if he is sure the Democrats gave the server to Ukraine, Trump did not cite any specific evidence. He said, "That's what the word is."

The accuracy of the whistleblower

Trump said that the whistleblower complaint about his July phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky "bore no relationship to my call."

Facts First: The whistleblower's account of the call has largely been proven accurate.

In fact, the rough transcript released by Trump himself showed that the whistleblower's three primary allegations about the call were correct or very close to correct.

You can read a full fact check here.

The identity of the whistleblower

Trump said "a lot of people think" that the House Intelligence Committee chairman, Democratic Rep. Adam Schiff, is "essentially the whistleblower."

Facts First: This is simple nonsense. Schiff is not the whistleblower, "essentially" or otherwise.

The whistleblower is someone who works in the intelligence community. The whistleblower sought guidance from Schiff's committee before filing their complaint, but there is no evidence Schiff dictated the content of the complaint, much less that Schiff can himself be considered the whistleblower.

The timing of Schiff's comments

Trump said that Schiff made up what Trump said on the call with Zelensky, but then, when Trump released his rough transcript of the call, everybody was "embarrassed."

Facts First: Trump can reasonably criticize Schiff for Schiff's comments at a House Intelligence Committee hearing in September; as we've written before, Schiff's mix of near-quotes from Trump, his own analysis, and supposed "parody" was at the very least confusing. But Schiff spoke the day after Trump released the rough transcript, not before.

Before he started claiming that Schiff did not expect a transcript to be released, Trump had complained that Schiff did not read the transcript available to him.

European aid to Ukraine

Trump said of aid to Ukraine, "Why isn't Germany putting up money? Why isn't France putting up money? Why isn't all of the European nations, why aren't they putting up?"

Facts First: European countries have provided hundreds of millions of dollars' worth of assistance to Ukraine since Russia's invasion in 2014. (Fox & Friends co-host Brian Kilmeade told Trump in this interview that Europe has indeed provided aid.)

Zelensky acknowledged European "help" during his meeting with Trump at the United Nations in September, though he said the world's efforts had been inadequate so far: "And, I'm sorry, but we don't need help; we need support. Real support. And we thank-- thank everybody, thank all of the European countries; they each help us. But we also want to have more-- more."

You can read a full fact check here.

Obama's aid to Ukraine

Trump said President Barack Obama sent only "pillows and sheets" in aid to Ukraine, adding, "He wouldn't send anything else."

Facts First: Obama did refuse to provide lethal aid to Ukraine, but he didn't send mere pillows and sheets; he sent counter-mortar radars, drones, armored Humvees and night vision devices, among other things.

You can read a full fact check here.

Hunter Biden's career

Trump said that Joe Biden's son Hunter Biden managed to get business opportunities during Joe Biden's vice-presidency even though Hunter Biden "never made 10 cents in his life."

Facts First: This is an exaggeration. While it's certainly fair for Trump to raise questions about how qualified Hunter Biden was for the positions he secured while Joe Biden was vice-president, Hunter Biden did have prior professional experience.

Hunter Biden has acknowledged that he probably would not have gotten a seat on the board of a Ukrainian energy company, Burisma, if his dad were not Joe Biden. However, it's not true that he had never made "10 cents." Hunter Biden, a lawyer, had worked prior to Joe Biden's vice-presidency as a bank executive, at the Department of Commerce and as a lobbyist. He had also served on the board of Amtrak.

Prosecutor Viktor Shokin

Trump said that the Ukrainian prosecutor Joe Biden had pushed to oust, Viktor Shokin, was "prosecuting" the company where Hunter Biden sat on the board, Burisma.

Facts First: Shokin was not prosecuting Burisma.

While there had been an investigation of the company, Shokin's former deputy, Vitaliy Kasko, has said that it was dormant at the time of Joe Biden's intervention. (The former US ambassador to Ukraine, Marie Yovanovitch, and the Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs, George Kent, testified in Trump's impeachment inquiry that Shokin was corrupt; the US and its allies had made a coordinated effort to oust him.)

Zelensky and Marie Yovanovitch

Trump said of former US ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch: "By the way, when I was talking to President Zelensky, it's right on the phone, you can read it. He didn't like her. He brought up her name and he didn't like her at all."

Facts First: The rough transcript of the July phone call shows that Trump, not Zelensky, was the one who brought up Yovanovitch: "The former ambassador from the United States, the woman, was bad news and the people she was dealing with in the Ukraine were bad news so I just want to let you know that," Trump said. Zelensky responded, "It was great that you were the first one who told me that she was a bad ambassador because I agree with you 100%."

Zelensky did criticize Yovanovitch, saying, "Her attitude towards me was far from the best as she admired the previous President and she was on his side. She would not accept me as a new President well enough." But he had been prompted by Trump, not disparaging her on his own.

Marie Yovanovitch and Trump's photo

Trump claimed about Yovanovitch: "This ambassador that everybody says is so wonderful, she wouldn't hang my picture in the embassy... She's in charge of the embassy. She wouldn't hang it. It took like a year and a half, or two years, for her to get the picture up."

Facts First: There is no evidence that Yovanovitch refused to hang Trump's photo. It took the Trump administration more than nine months after his inauguration to distribute an official photo of Trump to government buildings such as embassies, CNBC reported in 2017. More than seven months into the term, the White House told The Washington Post that Trump had not yet sat for the photo.

A State Department official who has recently served in Kiev said Yovanovitch never sought to prevent Trump's photo from being put up at the embassy. The official said the photo did not arrive until late 2017.

Yovanovitch's legal team did not immediately respond to CNN's request for comment, but NBC received this response from a person "connected to her legal team": "The Embassy in Kyiv hung the official photographs of the president, vice president, and secretary of state as soon as they arrived from Washington, D.C."

Soldiers

The treatment of veterans

Trump said, "The vets: for years you would turn on your television, every night you'd see a story about the vets and how badly they're being treated, it's a horror show. You don't hear that anymore."

Facts First: We can't speak for what Trump himself has seen on television, but it's just not true that the rest of us no longer hear about veterans being treated badly at VA facilities.

Merely since August, there have been news stories about "11 suspicious deaths at the Louis A. Johnson VA Medical Center," "how Veterans Affairs failed to stop a pathologist who misdiagnosed 3,000 cases" and wasn't fired until 2018, how "a Veterans Affairs medical center in West Virginia is being investigated over allegations that one of its physicians sexually assaulted more than a dozen patients," and how a veteran at a VA facility in Georgia was allegedly bitten by ants "100 times before his death."

Veterans Choice

Trump claimed to have been the one who passed the Veterans Choice health care program.

Facts First: The Choice bill, a bipartisan initiative led by senators Bernie Sanders and the late John McCain, was signed into law by Barack Obama in 2014. In 2018, Trump signed the VA Mission Act, which expanded and changed the program.

The U.S. presence in Syria

Trump said: "I'm pulling back. I just pulled out of Syria, except I kept the oil, if it was okay with you."

Facts First: Trump did not "pull out" of Syria. While he did withdraw US troops from the northeastern region, in advance of a Turkish offensive in that region, he has kept hundreds of troops in the country-- as Kilmeade noted to Trump, responding, "You have 600 guys there, right?"

Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said two weeks ago that there would be "probably in the 500-ish frame. Maybe 600" soldiers left in northeast Syria (he said the number would definitely be less than 1,000), in addition to the separate force of more than 100 soldiers stationed in southern Syria near Jordan.

Military leaders have said that the US will not keep any revenue from the Syrian oil fields they are securing, but Trump has continued to suggest that the US is seizing the oil for itself.

China

China's economic performance

Trump said China is having its worst economic year in "57 years."

Facts First: China's second-quarter GDP growth of 6.2% and third-quarter GDP growth of 6% were its worst since 1992, 27 years ago. Trump has repeatedly made clear that he knows that 27 years is the reported figure, but he has added additional years for no apparent reason.

Who is paying for Trump's tariffs on China Trump blamed "the media" for trying to convince people that Americans are paying for Trump's tariffs on China.

Facts First: A bevy of economic studies have found that Americans are bearing the overwhelming majority of the tariff costs, and Americans make the actual tariff payments.

The history of tariffs on China

Trump said the U.S. has never previously taken in "10 cents" from tariffs on China.

Facts First: Again, these tariffs are paid by Americans. Aside from the question of who is paying, it's not true that the Treasury has never received "10 cents" from tariffs on China. The US has had tariffs on China for more than two centuries; FactCheck.org reported that the US generated, from such tariffs, an "average of $12.3 billion in custom duties a year from 2007 to 2016, according to the U.S. International Trade Commission DataWeb."

Trump's claim also ignores China's hundreds of billions of dollars in purchases of US goods-- more than $300 billion during Trump's presidency alone. The US had generated over $37 billion from Trump's new tariffs on China as of November 20, according to official data published by Customs and Border Protection.

The trade deficit with China

Trump said the U.S. has for years had a "$500 billion" trade deficit with China.

Facts First: Through 2018, there had never been a $500 billion trade deficit with China. The deficit was $381 billion last year when counting goods and services, $420 billion when counting goods alone.

Politico's Michael Calderone looked into Jake Tapper's CNN special, All The President’s Lies-- scheduled for tomorrow night at 9 PM-- exploring the effects on foreign policy, business and the national culture of the president’s compulsive lying. Tapper said he "isn’t afraid to ascribe motive when the president repeats a false claim 'over and over and over' despite evidence to the contrary. It’s not an honest mistake; it’s a lie. And yet, nearly 30% of Americans refuse to accept the fact that Trump is a compulsive liar, incapable of being truthful.

Take the whistleblower complaint that kick-started the Ukraine scandal. Trump has repeatedly said it’s inaccurate, which Tapper considers a “lie” given that an investigation and testimony have largely corroborated the whistleblower’s claims.

“He’s repeated that so many times that there’s obvious malice of forethought,” Tapper said of the president. “He’s obviously saying this in order to undermine a fact, in order to try to gaslight the country.”

Trump’s dishonesty in the White House has been thoroughly documented. Washington Post fact-checker Glenn Kessler and his team have tallied more than 13,000 false or misleading claims since taking office, while CNN’s Daniel Dale this week highlighted 45 false claims specifically about impeachment and Ukraine. The New York Times counted more than 1,700 conspiracy theories on Trump's Twitter feed.

But Tapper said he’s trying to go beyond the sheer volume of erroneous and misleading claims... and address the impact on business, science, international relations and the national psyche. For instance, how might a false claim about trade talks with China affect global markets-- and more broadly America’s credibility on the world stage?

“God forbid there should be some major international crisis where the United States president needs the people of this nation and the world to believe what he says about something,” said Tapper, asking, “What would the result be?”

...“Facts are facts. The earth is not flat,” Tapper added. And the news media, he said, is supposed “to provide accurate information” and “sort through the spin-- what really happened, and what is the truth, regardless of who’s asserting it.”

And yet facts may not always be enough to convince the public what really happened.

Nearly half of Americans recently polled believe “it’s difficult to know whether the information they encounter is true,” the Times noted this week. One can find dramatically different framing of events on television in prime time and on social media.

The president’s desire for Ukraine to launch investigations stemmed largely from conspiracy theories, like the debunked claim that Ukraine, not Russia, interfered in the 2016 election, which Trump again pushed Friday in an interview on Fox & Friends. Also, there’s also no evidence former Vice President Joe Biden urged the dismissal of a Ukrainian prosecutor to protect his son Hunter’s business interests.

Tapper said some of Trump’s defenders are claiming he “never requested a foreign government to look into the Bidens.”

“That’s just a lie. That’s just false,” said Tapper, citing the rough transcript of Trump’s infamous July 25 call with Ukraine’s president. (Tapper tweeted Friday it is “not in dispute” that Trump sought the investigations from Ukraine into the Bidens and the 2016 election).

“There is an attempt among some individuals to create an alternate reality where the president did not say what he clearly said,” Tapper said. “And we just have to state what the facts are.”