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> It is bizarre, beyond bizarre, that these people keep focusing in on Trump's flamboyant habit of lying. His opponents lied. Everyone in politics lies. “All b

> It is bizarre, beyond bizarre, that these people keep focusing in on Trump's flamboyant habit of lying. His opponents lied. Everyone in politics lies. “All baseball players hit baseballs. Why are we focused on Babe Ruth just because he hit more than most?”

roenxi 3y ago
That is certainly a more reasonable analogy. What Trump does is outplay his opponents by using more interesting lies. They do a sort of ha-ha-I-technically-said trick where they lie but want to pretend they didn't. John Kerry is denying flying in a private jet because his wife was the one who owned it, not him and besides they sold it at some point [0]. Trump would just claim there is no jet, that he only travels by bicycle, that everyone knows he has the best jets and that the questioners were low energy. Then the fact checkers say Kerry was telling the truth. Cue the eye rolls from Trump voters - at least Trump is not trying to insult everyone's intelligence. He just up and lies in straightforward and entertaining fashion. Assuming the sentences parse enough to work out what he technically said. But at least there isn't some stupid game where we all have to pretend he was being honest. [0] https://fortune.com/2023/07/13/john-kerry-stupid-lie-private-jets-climate-change-house-republicans/ https://fortune.com/2023/07/13/john-kerry-stupid-lie-private...
- AnimalMuppet 3y ago
  An entertaining liar. That... explains some things. But I think it's more than just being interesting/entertaining. I think Trump also tells lies that a large number of people want to believe. But this may be changing. Trump's lies aren't nearly as entertaining anymore. "I won in 2020" is like, "Really? You're still on that? Get some new material." "All these court cases are just incompetent people, jealousy, conspiracy, and election interference!" Yeah, right. You're saying the same thing over and over (as the court cases keep coming). It's been getting repetitive. There's nothing new there any more.
lockhouse 3y ago
Except Trump didn’t lie more than most? There’s an old joke about it even: “How do you know when a politician is lying? When their lips are moving.” There are so many legitimate things to attack Trump on but it’s ridiculous to claim that he lies more than other politicians.
- myko 3y ago
  The fact is trump did lie more than most. He lied worse than most. And he deserves to be in prison for his lies and likely will end up in some form of prison or house arrest until the next lying politician pardons him.
  - lockhouse 3y ago
    Trump is a liar and a horrible person. No arguments from me there. However it just seems that he lied more because of the unprecedentedly biased media coverage against him. With Trump we had fact checking about every single lie and anything that could be twisted and taken out of context was. The fact checkers stopped when Biden was elected, but that isn’t because Biden stopped lying. He’s a known serial plagiarist and liar with over 50 years in political office and he has been lying the entire time.
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
  - drewcoo 3y ago
    The fact is that mainstream media focused on Trump lying and only managed to find a few every day. They don't do that with other politicians. We don't have data on them. So we, rage-consumers of media that we are, all think Trump is the biggest, fattest liar of them all.
- strgcmc 3y ago
  Well, we're halfway to proving this objectively. There's a pretty thorough database of lies told during the Trump presidency, captured here: https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/politics/trump-claims-database https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/politics/trump-claim... There is no identical dataset for other presidents (generally because they haven't lied enough at this level to warrant a dedicated database), but luckily, you can see that Trump's lie count goes up at a fairly steady rate week-to-week/month-to-month (i.e. there's no stretch of time where he stopped lying), so a little project for you would be: - Go back to any other modern day president from the past 50 or so years, whoever you'd like to compare - Pick 1 week or 1 month randomly, and pull up all their public statements or press coverage - Then count the # of lies for that week or month, and extrapolate a comparison I think you'll quickly find that it does not compare to Trump's overall average rate of 21 documented public facing lies per day (obviously we are not able to count private conversations).

roenxi 3y ago

That is certainly a more reasonable analogy. What Trump does is outplay his opponents by using more interesting lies. They do a sort of ha-ha-I-technically-said trick where they lie but want to pretend they didn't. John Kerry is denying flying in a private jet because his wife was the one who owned it, not him and besides they sold it at some point [0]. Trump would just claim there is no jet, that he only travels by bicycle, that everyone knows he has the best jets and that the questioners were low energy. Then the fact checkers say Kerry was telling the truth. Cue the eye rolls from Trump voters - at least Trump is not trying to insult everyone's intelligence. He just up and lies in straightforward and entertaining fashion. Assuming the sentences parse enough to work out what he technically said. But at least there isn't some stupid game where we all have to pretend he was being honest. [0] https://fortune.com/2023/07/13/john-kerry-stupid-lie-private-jets-climate-change-house-republicans/ https://fortune.com/2023/07/13/john-kerry-stupid-lie-private...

AnimalMuppet 3y ago
An entertaining liar. That... explains some things. But I think it's more than just being interesting/entertaining. I think Trump also tells lies that a large number of people want to believe. But this may be changing. Trump's lies aren't nearly as entertaining anymore. "I won in 2020" is like, "Really? You're still on that? Get some new material." "All these court cases are just incompetent people, jealousy, conspiracy, and election interference!" Yeah, right. You're saying the same thing over and over (as the court cases keep coming). It's been getting repetitive. There's nothing new there any more.

lockhouse 3y ago

Except Trump didn’t lie more than most? There’s an old joke about it even: “How do you know when a politician is lying? When their lips are moving.” There are so many legitimate things to attack Trump on but it’s ridiculous to claim that he lies more than other politicians.

myko 3y ago
The fact is trump did lie more than most. He lied worse than most. And he deserves to be in prison for his lies and likely will end up in some form of prison or house arrest until the next lying politician pardons him.
- lockhouse 3y ago
  Trump is a liar and a horrible person. No arguments from me there. However it just seems that he lied more because of the unprecedentedly biased media coverage against him. With Trump we had fact checking about every single lie and anything that could be twisted and taken out of context was. The fact checkers stopped when Biden was elected, but that isn’t because Biden stopped lying. He’s a known serial plagiarist and liar with over 50 years in political office and he has been lying the entire time.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
- drewcoo 3y ago
  The fact is that mainstream media focused on Trump lying and only managed to find a few every day. They don't do that with other politicians. We don't have data on them. So we, rage-consumers of media that we are, all think Trump is the biggest, fattest liar of them all.
strgcmc 3y ago
Well, we're halfway to proving this objectively. There's a pretty thorough database of lies told during the Trump presidency, captured here: https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/politics/trump-claims-database https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/politics/trump-claim... There is no identical dataset for other presidents (generally because they haven't lied enough at this level to warrant a dedicated database), but luckily, you can see that Trump's lie count goes up at a fairly steady rate week-to-week/month-to-month (i.e. there's no stretch of time where he stopped lying), so a little project for you would be: - Go back to any other modern day president from the past 50 or so years, whoever you'd like to compare - Pick 1 week or 1 month randomly, and pull up all their public statements or press coverage - Then count the # of lies for that week or month, and extrapolate a comparison I think you'll quickly find that it does not compare to Trump's overall average rate of 21 documented public facing lies per day (obviously we are not able to count private conversations).