Trump takes to Twitter to spread more lies
“If the press would cover me accurately & honorably, I would have far less reason to ‘tweet.’ Sadly, I don’t know if that will ever happen!”
A Tweet by President-elect Donald Trump on Dec. 5.
It’s sort of an unwritten rule to reserve scrutiny of new presidents during their first 100 days in office.
I’m only giving Donald Trump 100 tweets.
It’s sort of an unwritten rule to reserve scrutiny of new presidents during their first 100 days in office.
I’m only giving Donald Trump 100 tweets.
His little 140 character communiques are becoming tiresome.
When he steps into the Oval Office, with the weight of the American presidency on his shoulders, he’s bound to tweet himself into a frenzy.
It’s not that tweeting alone is the problem.
Tweeting a steady stream of lies (Yep! I just called him a liar), and especially as diversions from his lack of political sophistication, is problematic.
“In addition to winning the Electoral College in a landslide, I won the popular vote if you deduct the millions of people who voted illegally,” Trump tweeted on Nov. 27.
First, winning by a landslide is a preposterous statement, when the current popular vote (per the non-partisan Cook Report) has him trailing Hillary Clinton by 2,675,035 votes.
Second, there’s absolutely no proof that millions of people voted illegally on Nov. 8, or any other day in American history.
That didn’t stop Trump’s vice-president-elect, Mike Pence, from sheepishly trying to support Trump’s lie.
“I don’t know that is a false statement,” Pence claimed on ABC’s “This Week With George Stephanopoulos.” “And neither do you,” he added.
Pence knows that one of the laws of logic is that it’s nearly impossible to prove a negative.
Last night we had an elephant over for dinner. Now prove we didn’t.
When pressed, though, Pence used another Trump-inspired ploy. Instead of cementing the lie (probably with another one), he claimed, “He’s entitled to express his opinion on that.”
In other words, Trump’s declarative statement about widespread voter fraud, doesn’t need to be verified. It’s just his “opinion.”
Much of what Trump tweets, or says out loud isn’t opinion. To him, he’s stating facts.
Unfortunately, PolitiFact.com has taken a dim view of Trump’s lack of truth telling skills.
The non-partisan web site has rated 70 percent of his statements, so far, as being “Mostly False,” “False” or “Pants-on-Fire.”
They’ve rated only four percent of his statements “True.” There’s a good reason why Politifact.com gave Trump’s tweet, “Serious voter fraud in Virginia, New Hampshire and California – so why isn’t the media reporting on this? Serious bias – big problem,” a “Pants-on-Fire.”
There’s not a shred of evidence to support any of that.
When there isn’t a Trump surrogate, or a vice-president-elect handy to tap dance around his obvious lies, Trump viciously attacks the news media for casting doubt on them.
It must be mighty tough single-handedly waging a presidential battle against the truth.
When he isn’t busily tweeting falsehoods, he bides his time retweeting other people’s falsehoods.
Last year, Trump retweeted a bogus graphic from the nonexistent “Crime Statistics Bureau,” which falsely claimed that 97 percent of African-American murder victims were killed by African-Americans.
A boldfaced lie.
Trump later defended his retweet, by saying it came “from sources that are very credible.”
Recently, Trump retweeted the words of a 16-year-old, who defended him and his phony claim that there’s widespread cases of people voting illegally.
“Pathetic – you have no sufficient evidence that Donald Trump did not suffer from voter fraud, shameful,” it said.
That retweet earned Trump a lampooning on that week’s “Saturday Night Live” about his uncontrolled Twitter habit.
In it, Trump impersonator, actor Alec Baldwin, was too busy tweeting and retweeting to pay any attention to his daily National Security briefings.
Despite previously tweeting that it’s, “Time to retire the boring an unfunny show” back in October – Trump’s massive ego wouldn’t allow him to avoid responding.
“Just tried watching Saturday Night Live – unwatchable! Totally biased, not funny and the Baldwin impersonation just can’t get any worse. Sad,” he wrote.
Nope! Here’s what’s sad. A full-grown man, who should be preparing to be the most powerful man on earth – engaged in juvenile behavior.
Edward A. Owens is a three-time Emmy Award winner and 20-year veteran of television news. E-mail him at freedoms@bellatlantic.net