Imagine convincing yourself that lying no longer mattered. That’s exactly what our news media did — convinced itself that, with certain people, it was UNDERSTOOD that whatever question they asked would be answered with some sort of deception. And that, our news media convinced itself, was okay. Understood — never before had they been confronted with a president who lied with such ease that it was almost impossible to keep track of all the lies. Our news media had two choices at the start — accept the lying or refuse to accept it. They accepted it. When Trump changed the subject to the next thing he was going to lie about, our news media went with him. “But, what can we do?” they asked. The answer? Not what they did. The instant our news media accepted that first Trumpian lie — whatever it was — Trump knew he had them.
Liars are smart that way. They scope out our credulousness. What, they ask themselves, as they watch us watching them, can I get away with here? Great liars thrust and parry. They’ll feint with a little white lie, see if we snarf the bait. If we do? They’ll take us on a run like a half ton sail fish pulling an old rowboat behind it, some poor schmuck with a cheap rod and reel hanging on for dear Life inside it. That was Donald Trump with our news media from the get-go. Sociopath that he is, Trump still knows exactly where most of the lines are — the lines he KNOWS he cannot cross without becoming a criminal. That’s why Trump never writes anything down. It’s a master plan for never getting caught with evidence that convicts you.
The whole point is to lie but not get caught lying.
That is exactly why Team Trump continues to expend so much energy obstructing justice. If they don’t obstruct justice, justice will put them in prison for the rest of their lives. Or worse.
The bottom line here, as it’s always been, is treason.
Donald Trump committed treason in order to become POTUS. He committed treason every single day that he was POTUS. He is committing treason this very day as I write this and as you read this. Don’t look now, but Donald Trump is committing treason. And, if Trump is committing it, so, too, is every single one of his enablers and followers. The GOP has always known that Russia owned Trump outright. They said so — out loud — at a leadership meeting a month before they nominated him as their presidential candidate. Current GOP Leader Kevin McCarthy said, as he entered the room, “There’s two people I think Putin pays, Rohrbacher and Trump — swear to God!” Idle chatter in the room? Or co-conspirators realizing that, indeed, they’re co-conspirators. How else to explain what happened next? Then Speaker of the House Paul Ryan got everyone in the room to agree that what Kevin McCarthy thought would be their secret; “that’s how we know we’re family”, Ryan said.
Every single Republican knew or should have known that their presidential candidate was a traitor. That subject was always on the table. Our news media should have had a very similar understanding of Trump — that he was compromised by rich, powerful Russians with ties to Vladimir Putin — an intelligence agent by training, and a world class criminal by profession. Of course, if you insist on seeing Putin as the legitimate, honest actor he says he is — as our news media does — then you’re also sure to see nothing in the body language in this photo —
The truth about Donald Trump has ALWAYS been publicly available. Jump back to 2017. The Democrats, keenly aware that Trump’s presidency hit the ground riddled with corruption up to and including Russian corruption, scrambled to get the story out there. But, not being in control of any branch of government — as they weren’t after 2016’s strange outcome — the Democrats had few tools at their disposal. Those among them who understood the Steele Dossier’s significance were trying to get its contents into the sunlight. That the Steele Dossier exists at all is a testament to the fact that there IS Truth in this story and people dedicated to revealing the Truth despite what it might cost them. Remember how we “got to” the Steele Dossier?
On August 27, 2017, former Wall Street Journal journalist Glenn Simpson testified before the (then Republican-run) Senate Judiciary Committee about the dossier’s origins. The Republicans running the committee weren’t trying to establish the dossier’s veracity; they were trying to undermine its integrity and the integrity of everyone who helped create it. In other words, the committee was hard at work perpetrating a lie. Simpson testified that his research company, Fusion GPS, had been hired in 2016 by the backers of the Washington Free Beacon, a conservative, Marco Rubio-supporting publication, to do oppo research on Donald Trump. In and of itself, not an unusual occurrence.
But, what Fusion found — as they did their due diligence BEFORE formally beginning their work — shocked them. They saw clear evidence in publicly available material (their due diligence included getting ahold of and combing through every available bit of publicly available material be it print, audio or video that even mentioned Trump. What they found there — in information available to EVERYONE — was clear and compelling evidence (they were all journalists at Fusion, don’t forget) that Trump had used his bankrupt Atlantic City casinos to launder Russian mob money. To try and get behind that wall, Fusion subcontracted the work to an English company, Orbis. By now, Marco Rubio had dropped out and Fusion’s work was being paid for by a Democrat backing Hillary Clinton.
Orbis was owned and run by Christopher Steele, a highly respected veteran of Britain’s MI6; in fact, Steele had run MI6’s Russia desk. No one in the West had comparable contacts inside Russia. Simpson and Fusion turned to Steele because he had a great reputation. In fact, Steele’s reputation was so good that when the FBI went after Sepp Blatter’s corruption at FIFA? They hired Chris Steele! Now, understand — the secret world is not like the regular world. Smoking guns are few and far between. One must infer shapes in the fog using context and perspective. His “dossier” was a collection of his raw intelligence. If you approach raw intel like regular old “facts”, you’ll miss what it’s telling you. That, of course, is what our news media did — misunderstand how to SEE Steele’s work product while accepting the Republican description of it as “salacious” and “unverified”.
Once the press bought those descriptions, they made them their own. Nothing else mattered in the entirety of the dossier beyond whether or not Trump interacted with hookers. If he didn’t? The entire dossier “must be bullshit”. The news media once again rewarded a liar for lying to them.
Joseph Goebbels understood and preached the mantra “if you tell a lie big enough and often enough, it WILL become the truth”. It’s sort of how advertising works. Maybe if the Coca Cola company had persisted, they might have convinced us after enough time that New Coke really was better than Old Coke (never mind the pure subjectivity of the question). Authoritarians rely on cynicism — theirs and ours — to eventually subdue us. That’s how lies become “truth”. That’s precisely why EVERY lie matters.
Seen as a “one-of”, sure — what harm could one lie do? But seen as a pattern? One lie among MILLIONS? Whole different picture, agree?
Our news media has done the unspeakable but still doesn’t see it. They 1) accepted that Trump lied then 2) built that fact into their understanding of him. That meant that 3) a certain amount of Trumpian lying was now formally ACCEPTED as “just how Trump is”. Once Trump had made that a fact of life, it was only a matter of making the bigger and bigger lies “just how Trump is”. Is he a racist? He says he’s not! Is he corrupt? He says he’s not! Is he a traitor? He says he’s not!
It is not under dispute that Donald Trump lied and lies as easily as he breathes. His whole sales pitch now is “The BIG Lie”. He’s embraced it (okay, he’s flipped it, but he’s embraced it). At the core of the matter is a LIE. Even most Trumpanistas have acknowledged at some point that they KNOW it’s a lie. In a culture where lying was damned and the liar made an instant pariah, lying would have little profit for too much risk; people would lie less and less. But, in a culture where lying could get you out of trouble? From a criminal’s point of view, what’s not to love? And the higher up the criminal food chain you go, the bigger the lies will need to be bigger. Eventually, the onus falls on us. At some point, WE have to stop shrugging off the lies. WE have to realize how deeply the liar disrespects us.
And why they disrespect us. Cos they’re CRIMINALS.
Treason. That is our bottom line here. Pure, unadulterated treason. That’s why “The Big Lie” exists in the first place — to cover up an act of treason.
Anyone who says different is a liar.