John -
As we try every day to push for accountability and transparency in these perilous times, a constant challenge is President Trump’s steady stream of lies, misrepresentations, and conspiracy theories. With every passing month of the Trump administration, it gets clearer and clearer that we have to treat the president’s claims with skepticism.
We saw him make a pledge not to pursue foreign business during his presidency, and saw his sons do exactly that. We saw him make the laughable claim that he couldn’t release his tax returns because they were being audited. Three years later, we’re seeing him take the fight to hide his tax returns all the way to the Supreme Court. Most troublingly, as he seeks to buck any accountability, we now are seeing Trump lie and stretch the truth about the coronavirus pandemic, potential treatments, and the success of his administration’s response.
There are real costs to all these lies. In some cases, the cost is the credibility of our institutions. In other cases, the cost is American lives.
But the good news is that during the past three years, we have gotten better and better at breaking through to the truth when Trump and his administration mislead the public.
Just last week, while Trump was boasting about his success fighting coronavirus, and demanding that states be “liberated,” his White House was saying in litigation with CREW that the pandemic is not going anywhere anytime soon. So, we wrote a post calling out the discrepancy. We also got a response back from the Secret Service that undercut Trump’s claim that the Secret Service wanted him to stay at his Las Vegas resort during a trip to the West Coast. They had no record of making any such request.
We refuse to let these falsehoods go, because we refuse to believe that the truth doesn’t matter. We can only have an accountable and effective government if we know the truth. We will keep you updated as we uncover more in the coming weeks and months.
Thank you for helping us hold the line for truth and accountability, no matter how much Trump lies.
Noah Bookbinder
Executive Director, CREW
