Are you a liar or delusional if facts like live TV statements made by Trump and his chief of staff, Mick Mulvaney, are disputed? “I never said that …”
In our age of Google, you would think that discerning facts and truth would be easy. Alas, in my lifetime (72 years and counting), I have never seen anything remotely like this.
Being honest and truthful used to be revered character traits … remember: “Honest Abe”? What in the world has happened?
Well, my wife has for several years opined that Fox News is the source of much, but certainly not all, of the public being ill-informed and often the downright disregard of facts and truth.
In the Orwell book “Nineteen Eighty-Four,” the state controlled everything, and they literally rewrote history to conform with their current “reality” … “the Ministry of Truth” would actually go back and alter all past news records to conform to their current “truth.” Well, we aren’t quite there yet, but Trump and his supporters regularly dispute actual statements that he has made on live TV as if they never happened. So they are saying that you literally can’t believe what you have seen and heard!
Fox News and many purveyors of conspiracy theories (Roger Stone, Alex Jones) peddle their alternate reality to further their agendas. And we all know that Trump too has long been a purveyor of false conspiracy theories: Obama was born in Kenya, Obama is not a U.S. citizen, Ukraine has the server, Ukraine (not Russia) meddled in our 2016 elections …
Putin and Russia have been peddling sophisticated disinformation campaigns for years to hurt the USA and Europe and to resurrect Russia’s power around the world. For example, in 2017, they put out the story that Ukraine (not Russia) meddled in our 2016 elections. Trump has perpetuated their debunked claims. He sides with Putin and not with our intelligence agencies.
Is Trump a liar? Is he delusional? Is he being extorted by Putin?
Putin and Russia want to hurt our democratic way of life, and they have been successful in getting many Americans to no longer trust the news or our government and its agencies (with a big assist from Trump — the free press is “The Enemy of the People … the “Deep State” …).
I’m just an old-fashioned guy. I still believe in being honest and truthful and that facts and reality matter.
The impeachment hearings laid bare the fact that Trump extorted and bribed the fledgling Ukrainians to investigate his political rival Joe Biden. Surely, that is much worse than a bungled break-in at the Democratic National Committee headquarters in the Watergate Hotel under Nixon.
Dick Sheehan
Westhampton Beach
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