When you catch someone in a lie once, you might give him a pass. We all stretch the truth occasionally, even if just a little bit.
But when someone seems to lie constantly, even about little things, we start to doubt anything that person says. Unfortunately, that’s the case with our president. In his State of the Union address, fact-checkers say he lied or stretched the truth at least 30 times. That’s a lie every two minutes.
He’s lied about so many things that most of us have lost track. Those who do keep track of these things tell us he’s told more than 7,700 lies or misrepresentations of facts since he’s been in office. The crazy thing is that so many of those less-than-truthful statements can easily be exposed thanks to video and audio tape showing he says or does the opposite of what he claims he’s said.
Most of us are so tired of the lies that we put absolutely no stock in what he says. And these days, many world leaders feel the same way. Trust in the United States globally has dropped precipitously, which is both sad and frightening.
I should admit here, before I go any farther, that I did not watch the State of the Union address Tuesday night. I just couldn’t force myself to sit through what was likely to be an hour of lies and self-praise. I am relying on reports from people who had to watch it – reporters and media that I trust. And those media include not only The New York Times and Washington Post, but also the conservative editorial writers at The Wall Street Journal.
The president talked a lot about unity. To many, including me, those calls to end divisiveness rang hollow. In the State of the Union address, he asked that both parties work together. Yet only hours before the address, at a luncheon with major media, he talked derisively about his political opponents. And the next day, he went back to his old ways of name-calling those he disagrees with, calling Rep. Adam Schiff, who leads a House Committee that’s doing its job of Constitutionally-mandated oversight, a “hack.”
He lied or misrepresented facts in immigration, including the amount of crime in a border city he used as an example – El Paso. The mayor of that city, a Republican, said the president is wrong.
He talked about the “great threat” to our national security posed by migrants coming to our southern border, even as his own intelligence chiefs told Congress that the southern border did not make their list of top security concerns.
“Do as I say, not as I do” seems to be the president’s behavioral model. And because what he constantly does is the opposite of promoting unity – whether in politics or international relations or racial relations here at home – it really is hard to believe anything he says about anything, whether in a press gaggle or before Congress and the nation in the State of the Union.