The last two and a half years have been rough for people accustomed to hearing the truth. That feels like such an inadequate statement to sum up what’s become of the presidency, the news, and even the country, but that’s what I can come up with today as I sit here and recall how we could have predicted all of this right from the start.
Sure, the country watched Donald deny he’d done things we had all just watched him do, deny he’d said things we all heard him say — from the beginning of his campaign to the present day, Trump has lied constantly and will never stop.
But we never had a good handle on why he does it, why he thinks he can get away with it, and why, frustratingly, he DOES get away with it the majority of the time.
Allow me to direct your attention to two minutes of video of the very first interview Donald Trump did with any major network after he was inaugurated President. The full interview alternates between sitting down face to face with ABC’s John Muir and taking him on a tour of the White House, but one particular line of questioning exposed the Trump Truth Doctrine, and he looked Muir right in the eye as he said it.
Discussing the claim that millions and millions of illegal votes were cast in the 2016 election, Trump of course reiterated the laughably false claim that he’d have won California and New York as well if only he’d campaigned in those states. But then Muir faced him with the fact that his claims of illegal votes had already, even by that point, been widely debunked.
In fact, the correspondent hit the President with quotes even from allies — then-Speaker Paul Ryan, Lindsey Graham — that said his claims of illegal votes were not just false but dangerous to democracy. But Trump brushed aside those concerns and said what we should have been listening to this entire time:
Let me just tell you, you know what’s important, millions of people agree with me when I say that.”
It’s no wonder Trump lives in such an information bubble. He begins to believe the nonsense he’s spewing because his base all nods their heads so vigorously. We’re not debating facts anymore, we’re debating people who don’t care whether or not something is true, so long as Trump said it.
Watch the exchange here:
Featured image via screen capture
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