Trump Pathological Liar is Our Current American Reality…I don’t understand how anyone can doubt or dispute today’s part 2 headline, Trump pathological liar! The articles below pulled from the newsfeeds feature that main theme, since he lies more than anyone we’ve ever known! And we’ve got proof! Overall as president, Trump’s economic policies of expanding deficits & wealth inequality threatens to eventually crash our economy, his nationalist isolationism relinquishing our leadership authority could ultimately pave the way for nuclear war, while his usurping control over our democratic institutions & trampling on the constitutional balance of power could establish an authoritarian dictatorship if he could get away with it. That’s why I ask you please share The VORACS blog address with your circle of influence near & far, since American democracy & even our very existence may depend on our fellow Americans learning the truth about the dire risks we’re facing.
So it’s imperative we hit Trump, his echo & his supporters with everything we’ve got, since the real enemy of the people is certainly not the media, but those enabling Trump to get away with his devilish schemes. Our American democracy & the precious freedoms it represents are well worth fighting for, & currently the biggest threats we face in America are internal. If we can derive anything from history, great empires can collapse when they fall for false prophets &/or extremist’s self-serving doctrines. America is at a crossroads, which if we fail to stand up for our God-given conscience, integrity & values, any vestige of whatever is left of American exceptionalism could permanently vaporize.
All freedom-loving Americans must stand strong against those who’ve been deceived by the forces of far-right demagoguery. Allowing the enemy to win would allow the forces of evil to destroy the remnants of whatever we hold dear, that great American free society as we’ve always experienced it. Life as we’ve known it could cease to exist! OK, so maybe I’m sounding a bit melodramatic, but the point is if these worst-case scenarios do happen to play out, by the time most Americans catch on, it would already be too late! The fallacy of the Trump presidency is indeed an existential threat to all of us! Let’s spread the word since most Americans are oblivious to the dangers which are right in front of us.
Whatever We Consider Normal, This Ain’t It!
Only the first half of this article is posted, but as the entire op-ed from trump-america-this-isnt-normal explains, none of this is normal! In fact, it’s crazy & very dangerous:
This is not normal. In the age of President Donald Trump, it is necessary to repeat this mantra constantly. The ways in which Trump breaks norms and shocks the conscience overwhelm America’s capacity to process each event with the appropriate level of outrage and accountability. America’s attention too often moves from one story to the next like sports highlights. Slowly, surely, America’s norms are stripped away. The legal system is beginning to hold Trump and his associates accountable, evidenced by the guilty pleas, convictions and indictments emanating from the special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian election interference in 2016. Other Trump actions and policies have sparked countless lawsuits, from those challenging emoluments to the travel and asylum bans. However imperfect the system, breaking the law can have consequences. The penalty for breaking norms, however, isn’t so simple. Presidents are not supposed to continue their private business while in office, attack the media as the “enemy of the people” or talk about throwing political opponents in jail. None of this is normal. But it’s not necessarily illegal.
When it comes to national security, it is much easier to discard norms. There are laws governing the conduct of US national security policy, but norms are an essential part of the glue that keeps America safe. Trump has taken aim at those norms. US foreign policy has long recognized that alliances with democracies advance US interests, and that grudging partnerships with autocracies are to be managed. But Trump treats autocrats like friends, and friends like enemies. He defends Russia’s President Vladimir Putin against the US intelligence community; defends the Saudi Arabian autocrat Mohammed bin Salman, who is accused of ordering the murder of a journalist; and defends the systematic human rights abuses of the North Korean dictator, Kim Jong-un, even saying he wishes the American people would treat Trump with the same deference the North Korean people are forced to show Kim. Meanwhile, Trump picks fights with the leaders of Canada, Germany and the United Kingdom. This is not normal. America should debate how best to uphold its values in its foreign policy, not whether those values have a role to play.
Despite periods of xenophobia, America at its best is a country welcoming of foreigners – the Statue of Liberty greets immigrants with the words: “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.” But Trump is closing America to those yearning to breathe free. Trump has drastically reduced the number of refugees allowed to enter the US, imposed an arbitrary travel ban, is attempting to curb legal immigration, and sent the US military to the border with Mexico to respond to a group of desperate people fleeing violence and poverty. This is not normal. America can debate the contours of the best immigration policy, but it should not undermine America’s spirit as a land of opportunity.
More on the Abnormal
Again we can say none of this is normal. As these excerpts pulled from trump-turned-the-white-house-into-a-madhouse exclaim, normalcy isn’t possible with a madman in the White House:
It’s hard to believe we’re into another year and he’s still the president of the United States. The shock of it has not worn off. He has never achieved normalcy. Often, when I see him on TV, I react with a kind of nausea: Him! How? I know, the electoral college. I know, a slice of three states. Yes, yes, but how did we elect such a dummy, such a liar, such a baby, such a fool, such a dirty man? He walks the same halls Abraham Lincoln did. He sleeps where the Roosevelts did. He bathes where the visiting Winston Churchill did. Would Churchill have ever visited this president? Trump has soiled America. He has not made it greater but, in a word, whose need is now apparent, worser. The America that previous presidents boasted about — Ronald Reagan’s “shining city on a hill” — is now a slum among nations. The goodness of the American people, another refrain of presidents past, is now a mere memory. But American goodness was always like the banner that tour guides held up: Follow me. Follow the United States because we saved Europe from the Nazis and Asia from Imperial Japan — and then Europe again, this time from the Stalinist thugs of Soviet communism. We saved Berlin with an airlift and eradicated polio with a vaccine. We thought we were good people. We thought we were great people.
Trump is a rhetorical pratfall. His soul is dark. His vision is to shrink the traditional American spirit. He offers the world no moral leadership and slaps the back of authoritarians such as Vladimir Putin. He lies with every breath — not because he must, as Eisenhower did about the downing of Francis Gary Powers in his U-2 spy plane — because it’s the easier course. There’s not a parent out there who wants his or her child to be like Trump. Trump’s one certain achievement will be to leave his successor an America that will become greater just by his leaving office. A president who does not lie, who does not try to buy the silence of a porn star, who makes his taxes public, who leaves moneymaking behind, who does not turn his political party into a beer-hall collection of ideological goons, who rages at the murder of a journalist by a foreign country, who respects the importance of a free press . . . such a president will make America greater just by showing up. Now, though, as I pass the White House, it looks sad, the home of a hoarder — lies and scandals and crimes spilling out of the closets and Trump tweeting some inanity. It’s a madhouse that I’ve conjured. It’s a madman we’ve elected.
A Caricature of a Successful Business Exec
As this Trump government shutdown squarely of the president’s own making plays out, it’s worth showing a quote from 5 years ago on Fox & Friends, which was during the era Trump hosted The Apprentice. Based on his opinions expressed back then, it’s time for him to declare YOU’RE FIRED!!! to himself: don-lemon-says-trump. He’d have been better off keeping his reality TV show rather than switching professions. In fact, we all would have been better off! For an interesting article on why American voters would make the disastrous mistake of electing a lunatic, check out donald-trump-never-vetted-investigation-mueller..
Speaking of The Apprentice, the producers on that show had to work really hard to make their star look good, as seen inside trump-is-losing-his-republican-security-blanket-in-2019 & in these excerpts below from mark-burnett-profile-in-the-new-yorker-apprentice-producers-struggled-to-make-trump-and-his-decisions-seem-coherent. No doubt many Trump voters thought they were getting the boss they saw on that show as their president, when in reality it was a highly-orchestrated, heavily-edited, fictionally-contrived character with a carefully-crafted/whitewashed plot that show viewers were actually watching:
Television producer Mark Burnett was a key part in making President Donald Trump possible. When he approached the now-president to host the Apprentice, Trump was a mogul on the decline. But Burnett, and the popular reality show, turned him into a household name that was synonymous with success. The New Yorker talked to several people involved in the show for a profile on Burnett that has several interesting revelations about how producers worked to make Trump seem bigger than he was. “He had just gone through I don’t know how many bankruptcies. But we made him out to be the most important person in the world. It was like making the court jester the king.” Bill Pruitt, a producer on the show, said, “We walked through the offices and saw chipped furniture. We saw a crumbling empire at every turn. Our job was to make it seem otherwise.”
Although Trump immediately proved himself to be an ideal character for reality television, producers had to do a lot of editing work to make him seem coherent. “He wouldn’t read a script — he stumbled over the words and got the enunciation all wrong,” Katherine Walker, a producer on the show, said. “But off the cuff he delivered the kind of zesty banter that is the lifeblood of reality television.” Although editors “cleaned it up so that he was his best self,” Walker is convinced “Donald thinks that he was never edited.” Producers didn’t just edit Trump so that his words made sense; they also made sure to make it seem as though Trump’s decisions were coherent with what happened in the challenges every week. Trump often was unprepared for the “board room” sessions and fired people “on a whim.” That sometimes meant he got rid of people who had done a good job in the challenge, so editors would go back and “reverse engineer” the episode. Show veterans see lots of parallels with what Trump is doing as president now. “I find it strangely validating to hear that they’re doing the same thing in the White House,” Jonathon Braun, an editor, said.
Keep Reporting the Truth
It’s a real challenge for the media figuring out how to cover this prez, the person we’ve described as Trump pathological liar. But they must continue to call out his constant lies & distortions, since our free society cannot exist inside an alternative facts bubble as perpetrated by Trump & his echo. These excerpts from press-is-not-the-enemy-of-the-people-president-trump remind us the media is not our enemy, but we must count on them to help fight our enemies:
The press should not allow itself to be bullied, or baited into behaving like Trump. U.S. press freedom has never been more important. Journalists around the world are being threatened, jailed and murdered. The Committee to Protect Journalists reports that 53 journalists this year were killed and 251 imprisoned, levels that rank among the highest on record. The leader of the country that has most celebrated freedom of the press and enshrined in its Constitution is now giving aid and comfort to some of the bloodiest anti-press autocrats in the world. They’ve even adopted his language. Philippine strong man Rodrigo Duterte accused a press critic of being “a fake news outlet.” Syrian dictator Bashar Al-Assad has declared, “We are living in an era of fake news.” Poland’s anti-press president thanked Trump for helping the fight against “the power of fake news” and echoed his critique of “elites.” The Russian foreign ministry last year launched an entire “fake news section.” (Joseph Stalin famously called the press “enemy of the people,” a phrase also used by Mao Zedong and propagandists for Adolf Hitler.)
Let’s hope that news organizations keep up the pressure. Trump is a master of exploiting the media’s short attention span and its bias for a sometimes spurious even-handedness, which make it easier for him to lie. “A clear lie should be called a clear lie every time, and high up in every story,” said Jill Abramson, a former executive editor of the Times. She also worries about Trump’s ability to create diversions. “The press too often gets caught up in the circus,” said Abramson, who has a book coming out in a month, “Merchants of Truth,” about the contemporary news business and what she calls Trump’s “unprecedented war” on the press. “As a result, great stories like the Times’s exhaustive revelations about Trump’s tax scams get only short attention.” In the Trump administration, White House briefings are a sham, where officials lie and reporters preen. News organizations should send interns to these charades.
The importance of a vigorous press shouldn’t be subject to partisan debate. And indeed, principled conservatives have joined in criticizing Trump’s tactics. “To employ even idle threats to stifle criticism is corrosive to our Democratic institutions,” said Senator Jeff Flake, the departing Arizona Republican. Senator Pat Leahy, the liberal Vermont Democrat, said that Americans who “cherish the First Amendment” should “be appalled — the words of a president matter.” To be sure, every president and most other politicians complain about press coverage, usually equating fairness with favorable treatment and unfairness with its opposite. Sometimes they’re right. But Trump is different. There’s a big difference between ordinary political spin and his cynical lies. Most presidents respect the political and legal limits of acceptable efforts to combat unfriendly media. Trump disdains limits. Cornered, he will escalate his attacks and try to retaliate. As with any bully, the effective response is to be cool and aggressive.
Lest You Doubt Our Claims of Trump Pathological Liar, Check This Out
The number 7500+ so far is mind-boggling, & those are all lies that have been verified! Third World nations with rogue dictators have suffered through similar bouts of chronic dishonesty, but we’ve never seen anything like it in America! No other president or even groups of presidents can even compare! These numbers prove it in excerpts from trump-fact-check, which clicking on the link offers explanations on each of the 4 lying categories listed:
President Trump has a well-documented problem telling the truth. Fact checkers have compiled lists of all of Mr. Trump’s falsehoods since he took office (The Washington Post counts over 7,500, and The Toronto Star over 3,900), rounded up his most egregious whoppers in year-end lists and scrutinized his claims in real time with television chyrons. Here at The New York Times, we have also fact-checked countless campaign rallies, news conferences, interviews and Twitter posts. After nearly two years of assessing the accuracy of Mr. Trump’s statements, we can draw some conclusions not just about the scale of the president’s mendacity, but also about how he uses inaccurate claims to advance his agenda, criticize the news media and celebrate his achievements.
*Repetition and Inflation
*Shifting and Deflecting
*Misleading Vagueness and Fanciful Details
*Inventing Straw Men
These Next 2 Graphics are quite Informative from Daily Kos
dailykos/How-Fox-News-Brainwashes-Its-Viewers-In-Depth-Investigation-of-the-Propaganda-Cycle:
dailykos/Taxonomy-of-Trump-Tweets
Trump Pathological Liar is Sad but True
Trump is a master BS artist, so he can cleverly disguise many of the lies with all the haze & smoke he generates. For some informative articles on the so many lies & low points we observed in 2018 from this White House, with the worst of it still likely to come in 2019, please copy/paste the bold titles into a search engine. These are all enlightening articles, but if we made all these links live it would far exceed our quota:
In 2018, Trump managed to hit unprecedented low points in presidential politics: salon/worst-of-donald-trump-in-2018-in-a-year-of-new-lows-these-were-the-lowest
These were indeed some of the lowest points of all: dailykos/Trump-s-year-of-ignominy-His-top-five-worst-moments-of-2018
There is no bottom with this guy: huffingtonpost/trump-new-lows-2018
Here’s yet another not-so-innocuous list of boondoggles: msn/opinions-the-10-worst-things-trump-did-in-2018
Here are some interesting predictions for 2019, with #1 being the end of the Trump presidency this year: thehill/white-house-predictions-trump-goes-unexpected-candidate-emerges-in-2019
Trump told an astounding average of 15 verifiable lies per day in 2018 (getting back to our headline Trump pathological liar), with those daily totals approaching levels fact checkers could detect in Obama’s entire presidency: washingtonpost/year-unprecedented-deception-trump-averaged-false-claims-day
Three huge whoppers from this past week were claiming Obama had a 10-foot wall around his DC home, the Dems caused the deaths of two migrant kids, & also this one: huffingtonpost/trump-lies-again-about-19000-deleted-text-messages
We found yet another real doozy: thedailybeast/wall-street-journal-edit-page-breaks-with-trump-trashes-afghanistan-mockery-as-slander
More news revealed here on Trump’s overload of dissemination, disinformation & distortions: dailykos/Mister-Mendacity-1-the-annual-survey-of-Trump-Lies
He’s not only Trump pathological liar, he’s also bat**** delusional: thedailybeast/trump-says-hes-unimpeachable-because-hes-the-greatest-most-successful-president & alsoinquisitr/trump-rants-that-he-cant-be-impeached-after-winning-the-greatest-election-of-all-time
Now I’m really confused. If Trump has always assured us much of the wall is already being built & Mexico is paying for it, what’s the reason for the Trump government shutdown?: mediaite/trump-claims-much-of-the-wall-has-already-been-built-and-mexico-is-paying-for-it
Of course, Trump is an expert on everything according to Trump: washingtonpost/foremost-experts-various-topics-according-trump-most-whom-are-trump
For Trump, he considers “fake news” any reports not written by him or his cronies: mediaite/trump-boasts-of-historical-results-list-published-in-the-washington-examiner-that-the-white-house-wrote
A chaotic/problematic White House in 2018: nymagintelligencer/trumps-worst-greatest-hits-of-2018
Psychopath? Narcissist? Sounds like our prez: inquisitr/george-conway-trump-unsuccessful-psychopath-narcissist-kellyanne-husband
Romney calls out the madness (from which he was then called out by his own niece, the RNC chair) & I wish more GOP congressional members could find enough backbone, helping us in the effort to corral a corrupt demagogue: yahoo/romney-attacks-trump-saying-causes-dismay-around-world & also thedailybeast/mitt-romney-is-the-most-dangerous-man-in-trumps-city-of-lackeys & also mediaite/rick-wilson-romney-said-what-most-elected-republicans-think-but-dont-say-in-public
Harry Reid is also correct in his assessment: inquisitr/donald-trump-is-amoral-the-worst-president-weve-ever-had-says-harry-reid & also salon/harry-reid-tears-into-trump-without-question-the-worst-president-weve-ever-had
Based on what we’ve all seen of our prez, Dean is probably correct about Trump’s mental incapacity: thehill/howard-dean-dems-cant-negotiate-with-trump-on-shutdown-because-hes
It’s Critical Americans Distinguish between Real News & Fake News!
It’s true that CNN, MSNBC, WaPo, NYT & many of the major media sources tend to lean left. It’s also true that prime-time Fox News shows, far-right talk radio shows & conspiratorial websites tend to lie a lot, & they’ve been repeatedly caught in their lies. There is a HUGE difference between leaning & lying. Trump keeps calling real news “fake news” while always propping up echo-news which are the real lying fakes. And who elected these echo-nutballs in the first place to run our country?: trump-s-fox-cabinet-returns-vacation-urges-him-stay-strong-shutdown.
With his Trumpeter supporters constantly defaulting to that perpetual lying & crazy conspiracies which are routinely proven false coming from the echo, we should rightly question the mental state of Trump’s base. It’s one thing to have certain opinions & political ideologies, but it’s a whole different category to embrace & perpetuate alternative facts which are so obviously far removed from reality. As a lifelong Republican, even after Trump gets the boot it would be hard for me to return to the GOP, since the echo has apparently turned the GOP base into delusional nudniks. No party can be a force for good with an irrational base. This next group of articles help us distinguish the real from the fake, which searching the bold titles will help you find the articles:
This lean-left network is gaining traction by objectively reporting on real news, so it’s become a network their viewers find credible. That sure beats being a Fox viewer, most of whom tune in to be lied to without even knowing it: washingtonpost/msnbc-is-surging & also newscorpse/ncWP/?p=40141/rachel-maddow-beats-her-fox-news-competition
Search for this video that provides a good chuckle: newshounds/laugh_up_new_year_outfox_the_holidays
I saw the pouring rain in Times Square as they reined in the New Year, but Trump also rained on the New Year: newscorpse/ncWP/?p=40110/a-happy-new-year-message-from-donald-trump
Search for this article providing a review of numerous Fox lies, distortions & conspiracies: mediamatters/year-fox-news-non-troversies
As Fox fake news went overboard in promoting Trump this past year, the prez regularly returned the favor: washingtonpost/times-that-trump-specifically-wanted-us-know-what-was-airing-fox-news
While Shepard Smith remains the only reliable purveyor of truth on Fox during his daily hour, Judge N. also delivers hard truths to those viewers who seldom hear the facts: thedailybeast/judge-andrew-napolitano-emerges-as-fox-news-lonely-truth-teller
Another source of lying propaganda exposed this year is seen here: mediamatters/sinclair-had-terrible-horrible-no-good-very-bad-year-and-it-has-only-itself-blame
Extremism
There is a common thread here: islam-terrorism-far-right-extremism-isis. After all, extremism is extremism, whether it comes from the fringes of the far-left or far-right. They’re based on misconceptions within their tribes & radicalized messaging reverberating throughout their isolated bubbles. However it evolves, the end result is delusional, destructive & dangerous.
Evangelicals with Misplaced Faith
It’s confusing beyond bizarre the (white) evangelical demographic that espouses morality as a centerpiece to their faith, would be the group most responsible for electing & enabling Trump, the most immoral leader we’ve ever seen in America. Professing Jesus Christ as Lord & Savior is central to our faith, while giving a nod to an earthly leader sharing in those lord/savior responsibilities diminishes the whole premise of the faith itself. In ceding the higher moral ground, evangelicals are succeeding in undermining the moral authority of the church itself.
It’s such a strange dichotomy playing out here, where Trump constantly lies, cheats & insults because white evangelicals more than any other segment of the population allow him to get away with it. So by aligning so thoroughly with a dishonest, corrupt & lawless president, it may soon play out conservatives are unknowingly destroying both the GOP & evangelical church. To overcome the rampant hypocrisy & moral duplicity the world now perceives has overrun the faith, this is the one thing Christians need above all others: white-evangelical-christians-need-jesus-not-donald-trump-if-their-movement-is-going-to-survive.
And Sacrificing Their Principles
Evangelicals have such an obsessive fixation over conservative judges, they’re putting their country, political party & religion on the line. Trump supporters cannot possibly defend Trump’s moral character without first sacrificing their own. A cult mesmerized by a demagogic leader displays no morality: trump-conservative-ethics-henry-olsen-roger-kimball. And no, it’s apparent from Trump’s personal traits he has not been anointed of God, nor is he the second coming of King Cyrus, King David, King Solomon or even King Arthur. On that note, check out these articles:
True Christians Should Denounce Deceptive Charlatans Tearing Away at the Moral Fabric of the Church
Falwell Jr. has been shown to be not just a heretic, he’s also an idiot, as evidenced by the articles below. And such thoughts aren’t just my opinion, as we can all just follow our own conscience. We know right from wrong. As for this so-called evangelical leader who heads a Christian university, he basically admits he doesn’t know right from wrong, with his twisted/numbskullian logic exposed in these articles. He’s one of those Trumpeters who would be hunky dory with the prez murdering someone on 5th Avenue, since morality takes second fiddle to political power:
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/jerry-falwell-jr-poor-people_us_5c2c2884e4b08aaf7a93a4f9
https://slate.com/human-interest/2019/01/jerry-falwell-jr-trump-interview.html
5 eyes. 5 arms. 4 legs. All American.
And all good. We all owe a debt of gratitude to their service & their sacrifice:
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