Lies

[Jamiet99uk]

Why does Donald Trump tell so many lies?

Why is a substantial proportion of the US electorate comfortable with a president who tells lies on a regular basis?

I'd really like to understand.

[President Eden]

Solid prompt, I'm sure this will be an interesting discussion

[Jamiet99uk]

Well let me provide no fewer than 11 examples of Donald Trump making statements, in public, as president, that are verifiable lies:

1. June 2017: Donald Trump claimed the Republicans had won five special elections to the Democrats nil? This was a lie - it was directly untrue.
(In reality the democrats won one, the reps four)

2. Donald Trump said the US had a $17bn trade deficit with Canada. It was a lie. This number was totally misleading.
(At the time he made the claim, the US had an $8.1bn trade surplus with Canada)

3. Donald Trump appeared on an episode of The Colbert Report. He later tweeted that episode had broken records for the number of viewers. He was lying - this claim was false.

4. In October 2017 Donald Trump claimed the US senate had ruled that there had been no collusion between Russia and the Trump campaign. He was lying. No-one from Congress had made any ruling or statement on the matter.
(The full transcripts of the Senate Intelligence Committee are available online and at no point does anyone on the committee say this)

5. In July 2017 Donald Trump claimed his Presidency had, by that point, already signed more bills through the legislature than under any other president in history. This was a lie. It was not true. He was making crap up.
(Simply false. In fact Presidents Clinton, Carter, Truman, and Roosevelt had passed more legislation at the same point in the first year of their presidencies.)

6. Donald Trump reported and Tweeted that unlike President Obama, he made personal calls to the families of US military personnel lost in action. He stated that President Obama had never done this. That was lie. He was lying.
(This is both false and disrespectful. As well as making calls, Obama also personally visited Dover Air Force Base in Delaware to receive the coffins of troops killed in action.)

7. Donald Trump stated that of detainees released from Guantanamo Bay during the Obama administration, 122 had returned to battle against the US and it's allies. This was a lie, it was not true.
(Of the 122 detainees cited, 113 of them had been released under the previous administration of George W. Bush)

8. Donald Trump claimed his tax reforms would not financially benefit him personally. This was a lie. They will.
(As the only president in living memory not to have released his tax returns, it is difficult to calculate the exact impact. However, with the data we do have from 2005 we know that Donald Trump paid $31,261,179 in AMT (alternative minimum tax), a tax which is being repealed under Trump's plans.)

9. Donald Trump claimed the US is the highest taxed nation in the world. This was a lie.
(The best you can do to fudge the figures is to make the USA 17th)

10. During Hurricaine Harvey, Donald Trump claimed the US coast guard had saved over 15,000 lives. This was a wild guess.
(The official figure was around 11,000)

11. During the campaign Donald Trump claimed the US murder rate was the highest in 47 years. He was lying.
(Murder rates were higher across the US in the 1980s and 1990s).

[Jamiet99uk]

11 proven examples of President Donald Trump lying to the American public.

Why do they put up with this lying charlatan?

[ND]

Blah, blah, blah more attempts by Jamiet to discredit and undermine the rightfully elected President of the United States. I am proud that Trump is our President.

Pretty much every "lie" you listed can be debated and disputed if not outright discredited.

Also, President O told more lies to the public then any politician or President in modern history. Nice try.

[Octavious]

11 proven examples of President Donald Trump lying to the American public.

Why do they put up with this lying charlatan?

They were your best examples? That's genuinely quite surprising. I was expecting something far worse in your top ten.

Frankly, I dare say that Americans expect their politicians to lie. Indeed, you can probably draw up a list for every politician of things they have said that you consider to be a lie. The question becomes one of what you will forgive, and it is very easy to put much of your example under a heading of "irrelevant", or "debatable". You then just balance the good with the bad, and for a lot of Trump supporters there has been a lot of good.

[Occam'sNoseHairTrimmers]

I doubt Jamie really has any ability to undermine the president of the United States. He's criticizing the President of the United States, certainly. But I don't think anything he's said here, or anything he could say on a webdip forum would actually you know... undermine President Trump. The Webdiplomacy forums are really not that widely read in the grand scheme of things. And I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that Jamie probably knows that.

On the other hand the fact that Trump is "rightfully elected" doesn't change the fact that he says things that aren't true a lot of the time, and certainly doesn't shield him from criticism on that front. That he did in fact win the election is a total non-sequitur in this discussion.

Well there are 11 points Jamie made, if they're all discredited, why not, you know, share some of those debunkings? I definitely also read that Trump told Trudeau incorrect trade surplus/deficit figures for the US and Canada, for instance. Has that story been retracted? I can't find any news outlet that has retracted the story if that is the case.

And, on a related note, could you please substantiate your claim that President Obama has told more lies any politician in modern history. That's a fascinating claim (if true) and I'd love to see what evidence you have of that. I'm less interested here in like, examples of lies Obama told; I'm more curious about the quantitative and comparative nature of your assertion. More than any other politician in modern history... it would be super interesting to see the actual hard data that led you to that conclusion.

[CAPT Brad]

Interesting how Jamiet is so interested in the American president and American republican government. Is it because he envies the status of American citizens as the sovereign power as opposed to being a subject of the queen?

[Occam'sNoseHairTrimmers]

So non-sequiturs are a running theme here.

I really think Americans put way too much stock in what it's like living in a country where we have a Queen (or any Monarch really, but I've only ever lived during Her Majesty's reign) instead of a president. In reality, it really doesn't make any kind of a difference. Everyone knows that political power resides with the Prime Minister, no one is confused about this point.

Also, just because a country has a constitutional monarch doesn't mean it isn't a sovereign power...

[peterlund]

Why does Donald Trump tell so many lies?

Why is a substantial proportion of the US electorate comfortable with a president who tells lies on a regular basis?

I'd really like to understand.

Well you could as well ask the question why did the UK electorate accept and trust all the lies of Boris Johnson and Nigel Farage.

It seems like that the average mental capacity and educational level of both the US an UK electorates are not very impressive.

[Octavious]

Well you could as well ask the question why did the UK electorate accept and trust all the lies of Boris Johnson and Nigel Farage.

It seems like that the average mental capacity and educational level of both the US an UK electorates are not very impressive.

Peterlund illustrates a very good point. He's clearly of at least average intelligence, and yet demonstrates a remarkable and somewhat embarrassing ignorance of political events in a nearby country you'd expect him to understand a bit better. In much the same way as Capt Brad with his mind bogglingly guileless comments on the British attitudes to monarchy.

Similarly, we are likely harbouring great reservoirs of ignorance regarding America.

[Jamiet99uk]

Octavious - it was my difficulty in understanding events in America that prompted me to create this thread.

I'd be interested to hear from a US-based Trump supporter other than ND in this thread. Are you aware that Trump is a serial liar? Do you care? If not, why not?

[President Eden]

How come Marxists can't see why kids love Cinnamon Toast Crunch?

[Octavious]

Octavious - it was my difficulty in understanding events in America that prompted me to create this thread.

That, and it being another opportunity to highlight Trump's perceived inadequacies, yes :p.

But yeah, I wasn't being critical of you. There's very little harm in ignorance if you're aware of it. I was just remarking upon how wildly off the mark even reasonably intelligent people can be with their assumptions.

[WyattS14]

Bump. You never answered the question. Are you aware and why don’t you care?

[Kingdroid]

Octavious loves to miss the point if it means getting brownie points with internet fascists. Congrats Oct, you did it!

[WyattS14]

I was looking back through his posts to see if I could defend him in the most recent politics thread of his and... this is what I found. So I’m afraid I’ll have to leave him to the wolves

[TrPrado]

I presume the reason he didn’t answer the question is because it didn’t apply to him.

[Octavious]

I was looking back through his posts to see if I could defend him in the most recent politics thread of his and... this is what I found. So I’m afraid I’ll have to leave him to the wolves

You went all the way back to the start of last year? I'm touched / slightly worried about you .

Alas, there are no wolves on webDip anymore. But, as TrPrado kindly points out, expecting me to have given an answer to a question asked 2 years ago and aimed specifically at other people is perhaps demanding more than is reasonable

[Randomizer]

https://www.cnn.com/2019/12/03/politics ... index.html

Trump's lying is so ingrained in his personality that it's a basic response to everything. Once a person is out of favor or in trouble, then Trump doesn't know them no matter how close they were or how well he knew them. Or in the case of his personal lawyer Michael Cohen, "Who would hire him?" well you did you big dummy knowing what he was.