The Diminishing Power of Trump's Lies

Outside of Donald Trump's white supremacist and right wing Christian extremist base where the truth and objective facts have never mattered, the Mueller report has helped to do one thing, namely demonstrate just how dishonest Trump and many of his minion - e.g., Sarah Huckabee Sanders who learned to lie from a master liar, her father - have been from day one of the Trump campaign.  Indeed, the volume of lies has only increased. In my view, it is to a point where the press needs to start skipping White House press briefings and cease reporting what are deliberate lies.  Why disseminate Trump's lies for him and a bunch of lies for liars who have proven their credibility to be less than that of a sleazy carnival barker selling snake oil?  Stop amplifying the lies. Thankfully, some in the press seem to be waking up to reality and questioning their actions in broadcasting known lies and untruths. A piece in Politico looks at the growing media reluctance to accept Trump's non-stop lies.  Here are highlights:

President Donald Trump wants New York Times journalists to beg for forgiveness on their knees, and White House aides say they’re ready to accept apologies from the press corps at large. They’re in for a long wait.

Special counsel Robert Mueller’s bombshell 448-page report has unleashed a very different kind of reckoning among Washington reporters and media watchdogs.

The report detailed multiple efforts by Trump and his senior aides to mislead journalists and the public, reigniting a long-running media debate about how to cover such an unprecedented presidency — and when, if ever, to accept White House denials at face value.

The repeated public rejections of key aspects of the report in the face of sworn, on-the-record statements from his own advisers have diminished the power of a denial from the president of the United States — something that once carried weight.

“Reporters have to start assuming that this White House is going to continue to lie and manipulate the media,” Columbia Journalism Review editor-in-chief Kyle Pope said in an interview.

Pope even questioned the value of quoting or interviewing Trump’s principal spokesperson, White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders, who admitted to Mueller’s investigators that she made unfounded claims that the ousted FBI director James Comey had lost support among rank-and-file agents. Sanders later tried to defend her statement, saying the “sentiment” was accurate without offering any proof to support her claim.

“I don’t think Sanders has any credibility whatsoever,” he said.  Sanders did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Trump and his staffers have responded to the Mueller report with nearly simultaneous claims of vindication and frustration. [Trump's] The president’s delight that Mueller was unable to establish that the Trump campaign conspired with Russia to interfere in the 2016 election has been quickly replaced with rage.

After initially claiming “total exoneration,” [Trump] the president now calls some of the report’s findings “total bulls--t,” and he has bashed ex-staffers who supplied detailed notes about crucial behind-the-scenes moments at the White House. Trump is particularly furious with former White House counsel Don McGahn, who told investigators that Trump repeatedly told him to oust Mueller, a directive he ignored. The president denies McGahn’s assertion, although Mueller found ample evidence to substantiate it.

“Journalists shouldn't take anything said by any president at face value, but the Mueller report reminds us that [Trump] this president in particular says so many things that are flatly untrue that we shouldn't trust anything without checking it,” said veteran New York Times White House reporter Peter Baker.

“And we didn't even need Mueller to tell us that,” Baker added. “Every White House reporter has experienced it over the last couple years. Time after time, he has denied things that were confirmed elsewhere.”

Earlier this month, for example, Trump denied reports that he had offered then-Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Kevin McAleenan a pardon had he been jailed for illegally blocking migrant from entering the country.

Privately, White House reporters said they felt vindicated by Mueller’s report, noting that it supported much of their reporting about the president over the past two years. They have no plans to apologize for their coverage.

But that hasn’t stopped Trump and his aides from calling for journalists to beg for forgiveness. . . The New York Times has not apologized to the president for its 2016 coverage.

Asked whether reporters’ approach to White House coverage should change in the aftermath of the report, Bob Woodward said, “I don’t think so. I think, by and large, people have maintained their aggressive edge.”

Woodward, in an interview, added that reporters should focus less on allegations of Russian collusion and more on what he called the “governing crisis” created by the internal chaos in the White House. Issues like Trump’s policy toward Iran are deeply consequential and warrant deeper scrutiny from the press, he said.

Trust nothing that Trump and his sycophants say and cease giving him a platform to disseminate lies.  Question everything coming out of his thoroughly dishonest regime.