President Donald Trump

[DMT]

Numerous sources have documented that Trump has lied way more often and way more blatantly than any other politician in history. By repeatedly defending him and saying 'all politicians lie', you are normalizing his extremism. You can say you don't support him all you want, but by normalizing his behavior while criticizing his critics, you are implicitly supporting him.

Here's a Yale historian on the Daily Show who has studied modern autocrats describing Trump to a T.

Steps to killing democracy.

1. Lie all the time. CHECK
2. Accuse your opponents and the media of lying. CHECK
3. Everyone looks around and says, “What is truth? There is no truth.” CHECK (for a staggeringly large percentage of our country)

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/daily-show-fascism-post-truth_us_591c54abe4b0a7458fa48cbe

[baldgriff]

Im not trying to "normalize" his behavior.

Im asking the question - why after all of these years is there such an uproar? Where was the incredulity over the last 20 years? Why havent we been asking our Presidents over that period of time to be honest with us?

Is it that he lies or the scale to which he is doing it?

I dont support much of anything he is doing. Probably the only thing I am happy with so far was his Supreme Court appointee.

[GwynnInTheHall]

So I am curious about this.....

For the last 20+ years we have had Presidents tell us they would do this or not that and protect this or not that..............

Why is this any different? Why now is there such moral outrage? Is it finally that you want the President to be truthful or you want this one to be?

Never in the 8 years of the Obama administration has there ever been so much gnashing of teeth and playing gotcha. Even those who didnt get to keep their own doctors made due and found alternatives.

Come on BG, you know this isn't an accurate portrayal of events.

I know there were things Obama said he'd do and tried, but couldn't. But to say there wasn't this gnashing of teeth?

That's just incorrect, everything the guy did was challenged, he couldn;t get most of his agenda through because the Congress stonewalled him to include an unprecedented failure to allow a vote on his SCOTUS nominee.

If the guy sat wrong in a chair, there was outcry.

They tried and tried to crucify the guy, but couldn't because at the very least, he wasn't a National embarrassment ala Trump.

Trump has flat out lied, called Republicans stupid, advocated sexual assault and infidelity, admitted he knows little or nothing about the things he's passing laws about, treats his wife like a second class citizen, acts in manners he admonished Obama and Clinton for and that's not even starting on Policy points.

He deserves every bit of crap he's getting even before we get to political differences.

Obama, outside of political platform differences deserved NONE of the crap he got.

There's a BIG difference between what has happened to Trump and what did happen to Barrack.

[cardboardbox]

I dont support much of anything he is doing. Probably the only thing I am happy with so far was his Supreme Court appointee.

Well thats pretty much the only thing he's done.

[TranaGreg]

This isnt relativism. I am stating that factually we have been lied to over and over again by our President. Bush, Clinton, Bush II, Obama.....

so why is Trump lying or doing something that he didnt "promise" any different?

Hypothetical situation ahead...

My one kid lied to me about taking an extra cookie from the cookie jar. My other kid lied to me about stealing the prescription oxycodone that the doctor prescribed for me and then selling them to his school mates (one kid OD'ed) . Kids, they're all the same.

[baldgriff]

Trana -

I agree both are stealing. What I am asking the group is why did we not have the same rate of protestation regarding the other Presidents we have had the last 20 - 30 years. They all have lied to us and some in a very straight forward manner......

I didnt have relations with that girl
Read my lips - No new Taxes
You can keep your doctor

These are only examples...

Yes Trump lies - but why given all of the the lies that we have allowed are we finally holding this President accountable?

I am all for personal accountability! I am just curious where this newfound appreciation for the truth as it pertains to the President was found and when/why is it emerging now. Is it based on a real desire for a "truthful" President or a desire to see this one fail?

One of those options is where we should have been 30 years ago.

[DMT]

I don't understand why we have to keep explaining this fairly obvious point BG. Lying is not a black/white issue. All politicians cater to their audiences to some degree. Trump lies about EVERYTHING. He has no concern for the truth and he is engaged in a deliberate assault on facts. Academia and the media are tools of the left according to him. How is that even remotely the same as any of our past Presidents? Do you really not grasp the difference?

[DMT]

I don't understand why we have to keep explaining this fairly obvious point BG. Lying is not a black/white issue. All politicians cater to their audiences to some degree. Trump lies about EVERYTHING. He has no concern for the truth and he is engaged in a deliberate assault on facts. Academia and the media are tools of the left according to him. How is that even remotely the same as any of our past Presidents? Do you really not grasp the difference?

ETA: let's also not forget that you're evaluating past Presidents over their entire terms whereas Trump has lied more than all of them in just 6 months.

[baldgriff]

I don't understand why we have to keep explaining this fairly obvious point BG. Lying is not a black/white issue. All politicians cater to their audiences to some degree. Trump lies about EVERYTHING. He has no concern for the truth and he is engaged in a deliberate assault on facts. Academia and the media are tools of the left according to him. How is that even remotely the same as any of our past Presidents? Do you really not grasp the difference?

Ohh, so your saying that as long that the guy only lies on occasion or is pandering to his base, then its permissible. DMT - I have said it before - I dont like Trump. Outright lying is not black and white...... It is what it is.

My frustration is that its taken a guy like this for people to draw up the muster to stand on some facetious moral high ground. We should have been holding our leaders to higher standards years ago.

[DMT]

Ohh, so your saying that as long that the guy only lies on occasion or is pandering to his base, then its permissible. DMT - I have said it before - I dont like Trump. Outright lying is not black and white...... It is what it is.

My frustration is that its taken a guy like this for people to draw up the muster to stand on some facetious moral high ground. We should have been holding our leaders to higher standards years ago.

No I'm saying that is the reality of politics, which is all about balancing the needs of competing groups of people. Of course no politician can remain 100% true to everything they've ever said in public. To pretend that's even possible is just silly. So jumping from that absurd premise of the perfectly honest politician to decry the critics of a president who lies about everything just baffles me. You continue to claim you don't support Trump, yet you spend more energy going after the critics exposing his lies, then the person doing all the lying. There is a reason so many people are all over Trump and it's because of the sheer magnitude of lies he spews, as well as the extreme detachment from reality in the way his administration operates on a daily basis. No matter how many past lies from other presidents you want to highlight, no one has lied with the frequency or magnitude of Trump. And each new lie just builds on the mountain of bullshit that he's already dumped on us.

[Hornsby]

Again, not to belabor the point, but his lies HURT people, as do his promises...here's a list of what his latest budget proposals would do to Education.

Here's a rough list of programs that would be cut, according to the Washington Post:

$1.2 billion for after-school programs
$15 million for child care for low-income parents in college
$27 million in arts education
$65 million for programs for Alaska Native and Native Hawaiian students
$72 million for international education and foreign language programs
$12 million for programs for gifted students
$12 million for educational programs for Special Olympics
$168 million for grants states use for career and technical education
$96 million for adult basic literacy instruction
$13 million for the Obama-era initiative Promise Neighborhoods
More than 40 positions in the Office for Civil Rights
More than $700 million in Perkins loans for low-income students
$490 million for the federal work-study program
A $1.65 billion fund established by Congress for student support and academic enrichment

[GwynnInTheHall]

Ohh, so your saying that as long that the guy only lies on occasion or is pandering to his base, then its permissible. DMT - I have said it before - I dont like Trump. Outright lying is not black and white...... It is what it is.

My frustration is that its taken a guy like this for people to draw up the muster to stand on some facetious moral high ground. We should have been holding our leaders to higher standards years ago.

You never addressed my comments.

He get's not respect and is taken to task because of these things....Oh and he's just kind of a dick, which may be OK in Business, but not as the President of the US

[Redbirds Fan]

Trana -

I agree both are stealing. What I am asking the group is why did we not have the same rate of protestation regarding the other Presidents we have had the last 20 - 30 years. They all have lied to us and some in a very straight forward manner......

I didnt have relations with that girl
Read my lips - No new Taxes
You can keep your doctor

These are only examples...

Yes Trump lies - but why given all of the the lies that we have allowed are we finally holding this President accountable?

I am all for personal accountability! I am just curious where this newfound appreciation for the truth as it pertains to the President was found and when/why is it emerging now. Is it based on a real desire for a "truthful" President or a desire to see this one fail?

One of those options is where we should have been 30 years ago.

Let me take one whack at this dead horse...

Why did we not have the same rate of protestation, you ask? Clinton was impeached because of the "I didn't have sex...line." . G.H.W. Bush was limited to a single term because of his "no new taxes" pledge. And Obama? He was excoriated by the GOP for over six years as being the Greatest Liar in history (even though the "keep your doctor" line was not used to get himself elected.)

How much protestation do you want? I would settle for giving Trump what these guys got...impeachment, no hope of re-election, and known by the GOP as the greatest liar of all time.

BG, did you really follow politics before you started reading GOP talking points during the Obama administration? Hey, I'm just asking because it is hard to tell when you ask why Clinton and Bush I didn't get hammered for their mistakes.

[cardboardbox]

BG, did you really follow politics before you started reading GOP talking points during the Obama administration? Hey, I'm just asking because it is hard to tell when you ask why Clinton and Bush I didn't get hammered for their mistakes.

funny, Obama pretty much walked on water for 8 years as far as the media was concerned.

[Sour Masher]

funny, Obama pretty much walked on water for 8 years as far as the media was concerned.

Yes, I never heard Fox News, which was by far the most watched 24 hours news network over that span, ever criticize Obama. Breitbart always sang his praises too. I think Infowars frequently said he was the greatest POTUS ever--a true American hero and statesman on par with the founding fathers.

Obama was frequently criticized on the left and the right for many legit and non-legit reasons. Of course, Trump faces different/more frequent criticism than Obama for a variety of reasons that others, including DMT, have done a great job of spelling out. But getting back to Obama, the idea that he did not face scrutiny and criticism is absurd. If it feels like he faced less of it than 45, well, there is an obvious reason for that--he deserved less of it. Trump, almost on a daily basis, does and says things that would have been a major new story for months if Obama had done or said them. The idea that "the media" is somehow homogeneous and somehow universally unfair to Trump is absurdly opposite to the truth. Trump has survived saying and doing things that would have gotten just about anyone else in the history of politics torn apart by the media and disqualified from service in the minds of most voters.