Trump Lies: Who Will Be Left To Call Him On Them?

ignoramusDid you see Sean Spicer’s press conference on Saturday afternoon? It was scary, really scary. I’m not kidding. I must admit I’ve never quite seen anything like it unless it was Trump’s speech to the CIA earlier that day. I can only say these dudes have serious problems with the truth. Or is there a method to their lies.

Spicer was angry as he talked about matters of absolutely no importance to our nation. Two things that had him most angry were that a reporter tweeted that Martin Luther King’s bust was taken out of the Oval Office and that the press underestimated the size of the crowd at the inauguration. What does that tell us about what is important to this man?  Who cares? Sadly Trump does, very much. He also brought those up in his CIA speech. No one around his has the courage to tell him that he is mistaken, or for that matter a little daffy.

The reporter on the bust from Time Magazine quickly corrected his mistake and apologized which apology Spicer accepted. Trump at the CIA said the story of the bust became a “big story” which was untrue.  He then made Spicer turn around and call it a “particular egregious example.” How could he do that after he accept the apology?

Ari Fleisher and David Axelrod both suggested that Spicer’s statement was probably written by Trump. He he was forced to parrot it. They also suggested Trump would have been watching to ensure he did it as written.

Spicer said about Trump’s CIA speech, “They gave him a five-minute standing ovation at the end in a display of their patriotism and their enthusiasm for his presidency.” Fortunately we have CSPAN. I could see for myself what happened. Watching it I saw no one rise, apparently those in the front rows were standing throughout the speech. Trump left the room after about 30 seconds and the clapping last another 15 seconds at best. Why did Spicer have to make the 5 minutes story up?

Spicer also said, as Trump did at the CIA, that the media underestimated the crowd. He pointed to the transit figures: “We know that 420,000 people used the D.C. Metro public transit yesterday, which actually compares to 317,000 that used it for President Obama’s last inaugural.” That too turned out to be a lie. “CNN has confirmed Wash Po numbers from Metro on full inaugural day ridership. For Trump: 570.5k. Obama ’09: 1.1m. Obama ’13: 782k.” Both Obama’s figures were higher than Trump’s.

Spicer said Trump’s crowd looked less than before because “floor coverings have been used to protect the grass on the Mall.”  Anyone looking at the photographs of both events, here, would know that isn’t true. It is plain less were at Trump’s time than Obama’s.

He also said “This was the largest audience to ever witness an inauguration — period — both in person and around the globe.” It  wasn’t. Ronald Reagan (41.8), Barack Obama, (37.8) and Jimmy Carter (34.1) had higher Nielsen ratings than Trump  (30.6). The photographs of the people who attended and the transit figures also show that is not correct.

There are others that are questionable but why are there any? Why are the Trump people putting out lies that can be easily shown to be wrong? I’m beginning to understand their lack of concern for the truth. It is the same thing that happened during their campaign.

They have a certain segment of the population that will believe anything that they say no matter how obvious a lie it is. There is no way that this group of people will believe anything that contradicts what Trump says even if they see it with their own eyes. It also explains Trump’s constant war on the media.

Don’t you see how if he makes the media into something that cannot be trusted then anything he says must be accepted as true. If he can get the people not to believe the media then all that we will have left is his statements which cannot be gainsaid.

As I said this is scary, very scary.

 

 

40 Comments

  1. It is very difficult to believe that we are alone in the Universe, Counselor.

  2. Yes, the rugged Doctor who operated with his own kneebreaking Swahili crew in Kampeche was a Muscular Christian. He was an explorer, principally seeking the source of the Nile. He was not Cecil B. Rhodes. Both were products of their time. The Belgians hacked limbs and hands. They operated with the sanction and complicity of native Chiefs. $$$ always talks. The Arabs were in the mix in a major fashion in the Great Lakes region . Livingstone militated against them . ” A Man should be judged by the content of his character. not by the color of his skin. ”

    Are the militant lefties calling Martin Luther King a ” mediocre negro ” these days. Its hard to keep up with a rhetoric that now sees … Jim Brown … as an Oreo cookie. To paraphrase a local pol … They could not tie Jim Brown’s shoelaces. If the fat cat lefties want to exploit Minorities still further by rabble rousing them and using them as shock troops. so be it. They won’t be getting their heads busted as the divide and conquer strategy continues its perpetual cynical coil through Time. King had a larger Vision. I will tell my snipers to avoid shooting the driftless hillbilly in the red beret on top of the burning barricade, but I regret that you cannot see further. 🙂

  3. ★ Dr. David Livingstone. … 1852
    LETTER FROM BAMBARRE … He was influential in ending the East African
    ARAB-SWAHILI Slave Trade … Nuance and Mystery in ” HISTORY! ” 🙂

    • Livingston was a colonialist. He did his colonizing with a Bible. Missionary activities in Congo and sun-Saharan Africa were the precursors of out-right colonialism. Missionaries were the scouts of Imperialism. Whatever, their personal intentions were, their efforts opened the door to European Colonialism (Franz Fanon, “Wretched of the Earth”).
      The two big players in the slave trade were Tippu Tip, and, King Leopold of Belgium. Tippu Tip sent the Africans he captured to Zanzibar, where he sold them, and, used the proceeds to purchase clove plantations. King Leopold’s forces fought against Tippu Tib. The Belgian colonialists wanted to keep Africans in Congo, so, that they could work them to death tapping rubber.

  4. ★ * shared and common Humanity …

  5. ★ Speak up for * what you believe. 🙂

  6. Khalid, I would not have you be other tham who who you are ; or not speak up for wist you believe . ” Retrospect is an exact science” applies to everyone but the historian’s . The Irish Famine was a raw deal. So was an international slave trade, facilitated as Dr. David Livingston famously demonstrated in Central Africa, by pathologically cruel ARAB slave merchants. Livingston was white. Was he a ” White Supremacist ?” …. ” Money has no smell” was one of Lenin’s favorite quotes. It spoke to human avarice … of all colors. And to his cynical intuition that everyone has a price. That was Lenin. It is not me. It is not you. Everyone has their own experience . Being culturally catalogued and categorized is death to the Human Spirit. It ignores our shated and common Humanity. I am deep into Professor Seagull right now ( JOE GOULD’S SECRET – Joe Mitchell) but I will cast an eye towards Hodgson.

  7. John: I hold with Orwell. Double talk that disguises fascist racism has to be called out and closed with, whether, its directed toward , Arabs, Jew, Blacks, Browns, Yellows, and/or Reds. It’s all the same thing. White supremacist thinking is absurd. I’ve read the nonsense Tadzio puts out. Now, there really is a theory about how Europe raced ahead of the rest of the world, but, it has nothing to do with race, or, ethnicity. It’s called “calculative technicalism”(Hodgson, Venture of Islam Vol. II) Interesting stuff, China was the leading scientific culture well into the twelve hundreds. Why did Europe surpass China? Anyone truly schooled in white supremacist thinking should be able to answer that.

    • Do you ever ask why there’s no such thing as fascist art? Art is all about what can be. Fascism is all about what can’t be. Tadzio you’ll disappoint me, if you can’t come up with a list of Nazi novelists, sculptors, poets, literary theorists, etc. I look forward to discussing the role of art in Glorious Leader’s Fourth Reich.

  8. This is DEPLORABLE. This Blog has indeed turned into a newspaper message board. Some good writing now debased …Right and Left … by straight out name calling. EVENTS will be the editor in the days following this one. WORDS Vs. EVENTS. … EVENTS ALWAYS WIN 🙂

  9. Dave:

    I have only people’s words to judge them by.

  10. This comment section has turned into Breitbart.com. Sad! Did I really just read a reference to the “lugenpresse.” Are we now going to refer to the Secret Service as the Schutzstaffel? We might as well.

    Trump is not at war with the media. He is at war with the truth when it does not serve his interests.

    • Dave:

      Check out Tadzio. He’s a stand-up Nazi, and, is way out front about his fascism. Racial animus is his game. Wa-llahi! His religion. Then, there’s dry snitching ol’ Henry the Jew hat’in neck-talker. Neither of them is dumb, they’re just deluded by hate. Tadzio likes to put filigree on basic racial antagonism. Henry’s got a sneaky goy thing going. The first e-cite I ever back-tracked him on, was a British anti-semetic racist e-mag called “Spotlight.” Henry admires insinuation and innuendo, the double-talking kind of anti-semeticism that never really says Jew. He insinuates that he learned to hate Jews at Brandeis. Irony,irony, everywhere.

  11. Give me a break!!
    We’re all adults—
    We realize the man in the White House is going to do things different from other recent presidents.
    Don’t spend your time picking apart every little thing he says, you’re going to miss a lot of the action.
    Read the latest stock report instead!!
    Give him a chance and for Lord’s sake leave his family alone.

  12. Why does the expression “tempest in a teapot” come to mind?

    http://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/tempest-in-a-teapot.html

    • Wikipedia so far has added 495 words to Spicer’s biographical entry to commemorate these all important occasions. It may be more before anyone else checks it out.

  13. “If he [Trump/Spicer] makes the media into something that cannot be trusted”. Are you serious? I would only have to take off one shoe to count the number of people that trust the MSM as it is.

    The lügenpresse should be discredited. The Pavlovian canines grab the bone every time. Trump makes an ambiguous statement, the fake news ‘journalists’ put the most offensive possible interpretation on it and Trump corrects them with a more reasonable one.

    If the Washington press corpse [to use Obama’s version of corps] wants to give vent to their unprofessional partisan bile, let them. Spicer can answer the same mundane questions about the same everyday policy notifications, which is the function of these briefings, by calling on the Christian Broadcasting Network as he did.

    That must really frost the hostile elite in the media to think that a Catholic with military experience called upon a Christian reporter. There are those who are not as important as they think they are. In getting the news out it does not make much difference who gets face time except for the pushy types who feel entitled. There is a vast country out there beyond the incestuous DC Bubble

    Screw them. There is a new sheriff in town. The nation that has been abused by the major fake news outlets that brought America the Iraq War will cheer loudly. Well they should.

  14. ★ ” BARON TRUMP IS GOING TO BE THE WORLD’S FIRST HOME SCHOOLED MASS * MURDERER ”

    Chelsea Clinton showed a great deal of Class btw by immediately condemning this vile expression of an extremely … nasty …woman!

  15. Hard to believe a Marine was actually scared because Sean Spicer conflated television numbers with inaccurate Metro passenger statistics . The driver on his message was that the Lefty Media was crowing about the crowd numbers for Christ’s Second Coming in ’08 and ‘ 12 . Wait JC Aka Barak came back twice? Anyway, who wouldn’t have turned out to see a dema-gogue cum demi-god who was going to make the ocean waters stop rising, among other promised miracles. HALLELUJAH!

    If you’re feeling Spicer anxiety, which I think you are too hardboiled a cranky Marine and Prosecutorrrrr to really be feeling then let this be your therapy : Write a fretful piece on … Madonna … talking about blowing up the White House. Imaginatively inhabit it with Barak Obama instead of Donald Trump as she spews that in front of the mob. Extend the thought experiment designed to give you an illuminative flash of insight into the schizophrenic hypocrisy of the Left by the following : Substitute the name …Malia Obama …for that of ten year old Baron Trump…. in the statement issued from the Lefty Palace of Democratic Love and Compassion at Saturday Night Live by one of their humanitarian and socially progessive … Comedienne’s …. BARON TRUMP IS GOING TO BE THE WORLD’S FIRST HOME SCHOOLED MASS MURDERERS! … Yep, nice stuff from the … Do As I Say, Not As I Do … peace warriors. Gimme a break!

    • A quick glance at Breitbart.com or InfoWars and you will see the same comments (and worse) have been made for 8 years about the Obama family.

  16. Matt wrote “CNN has confirmed Wash Po numbers from Metro on full inaugural day ridership. For Trump: 570.5k. Obama ’09: 1.1m. Obama ’13: 782k.”
    So, judging from ridership; Trump had 50% of Obama’s 2009 and 72% of Obama’s 2013; If Obama had 1.8 million attendees (2009), then Trump had about 900,000; If Obama had 1.0 mill (2013) Trump had 720,000.
    Then add 31 mill T.V. , another 20-30 mill. Internet, and you see Trump wins . . . as NC said. “Largest audience ever!”

    • Bill:

      You may recall that at his first press conference Spicer put up a photograph of the Washington Mall, nothing about the internet or other things. By the way, as I recall Obama had 39 million television viewers. No one knows how much was on the internet but you want to play games with numbers go ahead.

  17. Spicer said it was the largest audience ever around the Globe to watch an inaugural. That statement was true. Spicer added up the tv, in person and internet viewing. CNN had 16 million on line views. 16 million, plus 31 million plus in person clearly exceeds all others. That is not even counting the other on line viewers. Maybe Spicer is owed another apology. 2. The media is already something that can’t be trusted. Less than 20% of Americans trust them. Trump has nothing to do with their lack of credibility. It is a self inflicted wound that proceeds Trump. If you are scared find a safe place and drink some hot cocoa. It may be a remedy.

    • NC:

      Spicer showed up at the first press conference and put up behind him a picture of the Mall when he said it was the largest to attend. Trump told the CIA how he woke up and saw the photograph in the paper of the people who was in attendant and that upset him because he could see back to the Washington Monument and he had a million or a million and a half people. Spicer came in and talked about other figures to justify the first lie which was not based on those figures since they were not available.

      Why do you have to defend the obvious lies You want to support the guy, you don’t have to go along blindly following all the lies. Or, as I asked before, do you believe there were three to five million fraudulent votes?

      Trump trusts the media. He tweeted last night how great FOX News is. He doesn’t trust the media who tell the truth rather than puts out his propaganda. And what has anything to do with hot cocoa.

  18. Anyone who cares to look may see plainly that the crowd at the Inauguration was larger than the NYT and WaPo alleged: CNN produced a gigapixel, to which may be added the estimated and generally agreed by all TV and Internet ‘attendees’ of 31 million.

    http://edition.cnn.com/interactive/2017/01/politics/trump-inauguration-gigapixel/

  19. Glorious Leader brought his own cheering section to the CIA meeting. Nobody who worked there would clap for that carrot-topped sack of shit.

    • True, Henry: Anyone looking from the podium or reviewing that CNN megapixel photo would think the Mall was packed from the Capital to the Washington Monument. No doubt about it: Trump made an honest mistake.
      As far as Zeke Miller’s false pool report of the missing MLK bust, it demonstrated obvious knee-jerk bias. His false report was re-tweeted thousands of times, before it was corrected. His first correction was not a correction: he wrote “the bust was put back” implying it had been removed, he caught them, and they put it back. It took about an hour for him to set the record the straight. The harm was done by sloppy reporting.
      And yes, when you add up the live crowd (I’d estimate 600,000, one-third Obama’s first), the television audience (31 million) and the Internet audience (CNN.com alone reported 16 million live streams; then add live streaming from Facebook, Youtube, Google, etc) you do have the largest audience in history.
      Speaking of knee-jerk biases, I note the increased resort to ad hominem attacks, vulgarities, school yard swear-words and childish spit-balls being thrown on this site.

      • Bill C., the point is…who cares? Why is the President so obsessed by this? Instead of obsessing over crowd sizes and personal popularity, how about he show some respect for the Office and discuss substantive issues?
        To your point, Trump never mentioned facebook, social media, or live streaming, he explicitly said he was what looked like 1 or 1.5 million people. This is what Trump apologists do, they take an obvious lie or exaggeration, and then attempt to say, “no no no, what he really meant was.” This happened throughout the campaign and is continuing to happen.

        Kellyanne Conway even had the gall to say that the White House has “alternative facts” regarding the number of people in attendance at the inauguration. WHAAAAAAAAAT!!?!?!?!?!?!?! Are we to believe the White Houses’s alternative facts when they order people imprisoned for treason, or creating reasons to invade countries? This is what propagandists do!

        This is not coming from someone who lives in a liberal bubble. I understood HRC’s and Bernie’s flaws, but the utter disregard for a) the truth and b) the average citizen’s intelligence is stunning. However, to this point, the Trump administration has been proven right regarding the average citizens intelligence. They will truly believe anything he says.

      • Bill:

        If you make an honest mistake you don’t double down on it. That is what Trump and his people are doing.

        You can’t change the dynamics or use alt-facts by talking about TV, internet, etc. Trump said the crowd at the inaugural was a million to a million and a half because he saw it run all the way back to the Washington monument. He was wrong. He was clearly referring to who was present – adding in make believe figures adds nothing to the discussion. Yesterday they were still posting pictures of the mall.

    • One thousand CIA employees asked to attend Trump’s event, and 400 (the max with standing room) were admitted. His CIA reception was overwhelmingly favorable. Mike Spence, then Trump got warm applause at the beginning, lasting about 30 seconds each. The “five-minute” standing ovation was reported by people who were there. The T.V. feed was cut off after 45 seconds. As you can see on Youtube, the applause continues until the broadcast ends.
      2. Many of the same people who hated Bush and Reagan and called them all sorts of vile names, hate Trump. So what’s new?

      • Are those Breitbart alt-facts, Bill? Gimme a break. It’s been name-calling central on this blog, since, I first checked in. You lads seem to be able to dish it out, but, taking it is quite another matter. I hope you’all get used to wearing that shoe. I gotta take advantage of the short time Glorious Leader is going to be in the White house to pillory fascist racism and it’s Trumpist practitioners.

        All power to the dialectic!

      • Bill C., again…..WHO CARES! Why is the administration going to war with the media over this? Castigating the media for reporting verifiable facts? Trump is turning the Presidency into a totalitarian regime right before our eyes. He hasn’t even been POTUS for a week! Stop with the non-sense, step back from the feeding trough of BS, and wake up. You have been conned by the greatest con-man this country has ever seen. By the way, when are those tax returns going to be released? That’s right, never! There was no audit. More lies and propaganda by the New Republican Fascist Party.

      • Bill:

        The only one who said 1000 CIA employees asked to attend was the Trump team. The room had many people there invited by the Trump team. Ask yourself why if they wanted to let CIA people in. The TV feed was cut off after Trump walked out of the room and it ended as the clapping did — go to CSPAN and watch for yourself. It is out there to look at so why don’t you go to CSPAN and see it. Stop trying to defend lies. Or do you also think there were over 3 million illegal votes and Trump won the popular vote?

    • John King McDonald

      Khalid, You need to stop gilding it and just say what you mean. 🙂 I get a kick out of you because you are extremely bright and importantly , have done the WORK intellectually . If I am going to trade insults I would as soon do it with a fellow Professional rather than coffeehouse pseudo-Guevara’s . This is not my intent here, however.

      Santayana said something I always liked and always remembered about fanaticism … ” A fanatic is one who, once he realizes his cause is truly lost, simply redoubles his efforts ”

      Back in the day when I warred with fanatics, and cared to attempt to change their minds. I was kicked out of enough Cambridge poetry readings by the Trust Funded Social Justice ” Freethinkers ” to realize that political fascism is an Equal Opportunity deal. Yep, red-faced and fuming the grey hair helmeted slummer hags wirh the Radcliffe credentials and their slavering and slavish sycophant ilk would press up against Dear Old Jack and fussily lock the door as Ieft . Just another poor white boy from Dorchester vilified by … The Rich and their Vassals.

      So, it is not the … Lads … who are any more or less thinskinned than the Lefties when it comes to living in a bubble. Regards, Kamerado .