I’m kind of wondering how a government official can possibly perform their role if they lie over and over again.
Yes, in the case of protecting known secret information, I can see that a government official making an official statement coming from the official cover story. That is part of their duties. But outright lying about everything else? How can you even begin to trust someone or expect them to make high level executive decisions for the entire country if they state:
Hurricane Dorian is headed for Alabama
A million illegal votes were cast for the rival candidate in the state of California
The noise from windmills causes cancer
The troops received a pay raise of 10 percent after 9 years of no pay raise
You require a government ID to purchase a box of cereal
Riots over sanctuary cities are taking place at this time in California
Kamala Harris is officially in support of MS-13
The polar ice caps are at a record level of size (and were predicted to have entirely melted by 2019)
Amazon is an exception in that it doesn’t pay taxes. (most corporations do not pay income taxes)
Inner-City Crime is reaching record high levels
To name a few mis-statements of verifiable facts by a certain present day public official.
Why does it matter if this official colluded with Ukraine or not for dirt on a political opponent? Repeatedly and willfully (or acting with indifference) making dishonest official statements seems like a reason to remove an official from office.
It’s one thing to disagree on matters that a credible counter-argument exists for. It’s another to deny objective reality.
The voters can certainly “remove” someone from office for any reason whatever, no matter how irrational, by voting them out at the next election.
Any other method of removing someone from office, any elected office, has to follow the rules of the jurisdiction. Under the rules of the jurisdiction for the president, he can be removed (impeached and then convicted) for “treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors.” So far, repeatedly telling giant whoppers to the public has not been classified as a high crime or (high) misdemeanor, let alone treason or bribery. It could be attempted but it would be a stretch, and impeachment is not something to be attempted lightly.
Note an important distinction between the current occupant of the oval office, and President Clinton. Clinton was impeached (but not convicted) for lying under oath. The current occupant, hereinafter known as “45,” has not testified under oath while in office, so he could not have lied under oath.
It sure is when you lie to police. And if you lie in an advertisment for financial gain. And if you lie as a CEO of a company, making statements material to the future financial prospects of that company. And if you lie when writing up an invoice. Or an official report of a company’s financials. Or lie on your taxes. Or lie by writing a check that won’t cash.
Honestly there are a long, long list of cases where lying is a crime or a matter you will lose and pay substantial fines when you are caught. Seems like a role as the head executive of an entire nation should be held to the standards the FTC would hold a corporate CEO to.
The quid pro quo is a more serious charge because it was an attempt by the President to use the powers of his office to manipulate the outcome of his own re-election. It’s a fundamental attack against our system of democratic rule.
It’s not merely that it is a quid pro quo. It is that the President of the United States opted to withhold foreign-relations favors from another country unless the leader of that country did things to help the US President get re-elected. He specifically invited international interference in our politics and paid for it to happen with favors (or the withdrawal of favors being dangled).
He was caught doing an end run around the democratic process. It’s the same thing Nixon got in trouble for: interfering in the democratic electoral process. In Nixon’s case, bugging the opposition party. Trump’s violation is more blatant and more egregious. He didn’t quite hire a contract killer to off the Democratic rival but it’s only marginally short of that. He told the Ukrainian president to come up with something he could use against Biden.
“Should be” isn’t a synonym of “is”, and short of amending the Constitution I’m not sure how you could legally require the president to tell the truth all the time about everything.
Every president lies at some point. “I did not have sex with that woman,” “We have proof of Saddam’s weapons of mass destruction,” “If you like your current insurance, you get to keep it,” etc. And no one has EVER considered Trump to be a reliable source of factual information; his crime is chipping away at the entire concept of factual truth.
His lies aren’t uniformly reprehensible. Equating the most reliable news sources with leftist agitprop is pretty bad, with levels of obfuscation like a lasagna. OTOH, the “hurricane will hit Mobile Bay” comment was only significant in that his grasp of geography is appallingly bad. Most of the others on your list fall somewhere in between.
I’d rather have Joe Isuzu as president than Gordon Gekko. Sadly, we don’t have that clear-cut a choice: Trump is both.
There are all manner of “lies.” Lying by omission. Coloring the truth. Presenting only one side. Exaggerating.
I doubt many non-sociopaths would say that all manner of outright lying is OK in an elected official. But, as others have said, the general recourse to most such dishonesty is at the next election.
I do sympathize with the OP to the extent that, compared to the president’s entire performance, the specific subject of the impeachment inquiry seems pretty small beer. Was just reading this morning about the settlement in the Trump Foundation suit. As the writer said, this would doom any other president. With Trump, it is just another day.
And what may be worst, a good percentage of voters (30-40%) are absolutely fine with that. My perception is that another sizable percent either enjoys it as entertainment, or simply feels “everybody does it.” A sorry state indeed.
Not really, though ? I mean it’s a bad idea, and generally speaking you shouldn’t talk to the police at all, but it’s not a crime. It’s a crime to lie in court, while under oath. Not to the guy arresting you or interrogating you (although obviously if they can catch you in a lie during interrogation, they’ll hammer you with it in court)
I guess it’s “OK” in the sense that it’s not specifically called out as a crime or misdemeanor, though Congress can certainly deem it so. IMHO, it should, because this level of habitual lying speaks to total corruption and a complete inability to govern. FTR, you listed ten lies. The Washington Post has recorded 13,435 of them.
Even when I was little this bothered me. I took the commandment about not bearing false witness to mean “don’t lie, period”. Some ancient lawyer probably twisted it into the tortured definition it currently has.
Think about it. It’s okay to lie, unless you promised (swore) not to lie in front of certain people. What crap.
I have an even more negative read on it. This was him using/subverting the foreign policy of the entire nation for short-term personal gain.
I mean he was already doing it by favouring people, groups, lobbies and foreign nations who gave him money ; which is why he should have been enjoined to sell his peanut farm at the very least ; but it’s the same order of idea. The reason why it absolutely cannot be supported by the nation is the same : the interests of the nation that elected him to represent them and the personal interest of Donald Trump are not equivalent, and selling out the former for the latter is a somewhat bad national policy.
The long and short of it is that a politician who is a habitual serial liar is the exact opposite of “honest” and should not hold an office of trust of any kind. For the holder of the highest office in the land to be a lying sack of shit is not good for the nation, since the whole principle of governance becomes perverted to the service of dishonest self-interest rather than fact.
I’d put Trump in the top four of Presidential liars (alongside Franklin Roosevelt, Lyndon Johnson, and Richard Nixon). But I think Trump’s unique in that for somebody who lies so much, he’s amazingly bad at it. As I’ve said before, Trump lies like a four year old. He tells lies that you know are lies as he’s telling them.
I’m going to argue that this is not necessarily true. I’ll use Franklin Roosevelt as an example. He understood that the American public was isolationist. But he felt that Nazi Germany was a threat to America and we needed to prepare to fight them.
So he lied. Repeatedly. He told the American people that he was acting in accord with their isolationist views while he secretly did the opposite.
But I feel Roosevelt was right (and I think history would agree). Germany was a threat to the United States and Roosevelt’s foreign policy was the correct one. So I feel Roosevelt was justified in lying to further the more important priority of national security.
This is not intended as a defense of Trump. As far as we’ve seen, Trump lies only to further his own interests.