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“All governments lie,” legendary, independent journalist I.F. Stone wrote in 1965, critiquing official U.S. statements on the “progress” of the Vietnam War. He added, speaking of President Lyndon Johnson, “It is dangerous to trust anything he says.” Half a century later, President Donald Trump is taking lying to a whole new level. The Washington Post’s Fact Checker documented 22,247 Trump lies during his first term, through late August. When asked why the pace of Trump’s lies has increased over the course of his presidency, journalist Daniel Dale, CNN’s full-time Trump fact checker, replied, “he’s talking more.”
The deadly consequences of Trump’s lies have been laid bare by the coronavirus pandemic. With less than 5% of the world’s population, the United States has 20% of the world’s COVD-19 infections and deaths: more than 8,300,000 infected people and over 220,000 deaths. How is it possible that the world’s richest country, with public health institutions that were, until recently, the gold standard globally, could fail so tragically? Much of the blame falls squarely on Donald Trump, who has lied from the start about this ever-worsening COVID catastrophe.
“We have it totally under control,” Trump boasted on January 22nd. On February 7th, Trump told journalist Bob Woodward the coronavirus was...Read More →
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