It almost feels like overkill at this point to write an article about Donald Trump being a liar, since that’s basically a summary of every day’s news cycle: Trump lied about something, got fact-checked, and called the fact check fake news.
So instead, this one is about the fact that at this point, Trump has to just be gaslighting America. Like, lying about stuff so stupid and easy to see through that he’s just trying to get people to fact-check him so he can call them the liars. Like, imagine if you saw him answering questions on the White House lawn and then later he claimed that everything he’d said had been in the Rose Garden instead. THAT stupid.
Now, we get that anything that’s ever reported about him that makes him look bad is something he’ll push back against, but it’s just silly to push back on some things — like when the White House said his skin color was the result of “good genes” (it’s not), or when he claimed that former presidents supported his racist border wall (they don’t).
So when Trump tweeted today trying to cover his ass after the leak of months of his schedule that exposed him as a lazy, lying grifter who mostly watches TV and pays himself with taxpayer money to play rounds at his own golf course, it was an effort to cast the leaker as the liar and portray himself in a more positive light:
The media was able to get my work schedule, something very easy to do, but it should have been reported as a positive, not negative. When the term Executive Time is used, I am generally working, not relaxing. In fact, I probably work more hours than almost any past President…..
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 10, 2019
….The fact is, when I took over as President, our Country was a mess. Depleted Military, Endless Wars, a potential War with North Korea, V.A., High Taxes & too many Regulations, Border, Immigration & HealthCare problems, & much more. I had no choice but to work very long hours!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 10, 2019
But given what we’ve discovered throughout his tenure about him, from watching so much cable news that he demanded his aides print out the chyrons for him to learning that he walks out of the middle of policy meetings to go watch television, it’s just ridiculous to ask Americans to believe that “executive time” in those leaked schedules means anything other than him goofing off.
But even the ridiculousness of thinking anyone would believe that aspect pales in comparison to the actual gaslighting here — which is him pretending that America wasn’t much better off before he took office. He inherited an economy that was, at the time, recovering faster than it is now from the worst economic disaster since the 1930s. Obama had already ended all major conflicts that could be called wars. There was no potential war with North Korea until he started tweeting insults at their leader. The top marginal tax rate was less than it was under Reagan.
That’s what makes it all so disgusting — there actually wasn’t that much work for him to do, and he did even less than that. History reflects literally the opposite of everything in his tweets today.
Featured image via screen capture
