The following is presented as part of The Columbian’s Opinion content, which offers a point of view in order to provoke thought and debate of civic issues. Opinions represent the viewpoint of the author. Unsigned editorials represent the consensus opinion of The Columbian’s editorial board, which operates independently of the news department.
He’s at it again, twisting history and the facts in his own definition of reality.
It’s one way President Donald Trump tries to control current events — by redefining what happened and then reiterating his incorrect version. A recent example: his false claim that Ukraine was responsible for Russia’s 2022 invasion of its territory.
That echoes Trump’s repeated insistence he really won the 2020 election or that the violent Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol insurrection was “a day of love,” lies that most Republicans say they believe though, in fact, they are untrue.
In his recent 100-minute speech to Congress, The Washington Post’s Fact Checker, Glenn Kessler, concluded Trump made at least 26 statements that were untrue, misleading or lacked context.
In doing so, he is using a practice widely attributed to the late Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels. “If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it,” Goebbels supposedly said.
Tony Schwartz, the ghostwriter of Trump’s 1987 book “The Art of the Deal,” has a theory of why Trump lies or misspeaks so frequently. “His aim is never accuracy,” Schwartz wrote during Trump’s first term. “It’s domination.”
And Trump recognizes that, despite frequent news accounts cataloging his lies, they haven’t hurt him.
To be fair, all presidents exaggerate their achievements, misquote relevant numbers and sometimes tell singular whoppers like Bill Clinton’s “I did not have sexual relations with that woman, Miss Lewinsky.” Trump’s predecessor, Joe Biden, often exaggerated his economic record, and his aides repeatedly denied signs of his age-related limitations.
But no president has lied so often and so significantly as Trump. During his first term, The Washington Post’s Fact Checker kept count and concluded he told 30,573 untruths, including 503 on a single day, the day before the 2020 election.
One longtime practice by the president and his aides is to label unfriendly stories as “fake news.” Trump, himself, explained his modus operandi in a candid 2016 off-camera conversation with longtime CBS correspondent Lesley Stahl, after she asked why he repeatedly attacks the press.
“He said, ‘You know why I do it? I do it to discredit you all and demean you all so when you write negative stories about me, no one will believe you,’ ” she said in recounting the conversation at a 2018 New York press dinner.
The Oxford English Dictionary says a fact is “something that is known to have happened or to exist, especially something for which proof exists.” Trump’s aides don’t hesitate to invent “facts” to suit his “political or ideological purposes.”
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt did so in defending the decision to bar the nation’s largest wire service, The Associated Press, from the Oval Office and White House pools. She cited AP’s decision, in its widely used Style Book, to label the international body of water along the nation’s southern coast by its historic name, the Gulf of Mexico, rather than accept Trump’s unilateral decision renaming it the Gulf of America.
In something of an irony, given Trump’s track record, she vowed to hold news outlets “accountable” for lies. “It is a fact that the body of water off the coast of Louisiana is called the Gulf of America,” she said.
But that “fact” is not fully accepted. The Washington Post said it would use Gulf of Mexico in most references because it “is not solely within the United States’ jurisdiction and the name of Gulf of America might confuse global readers.” Google Maps split the difference, declaring U.S. users of its app will see the Gulf of America, while Mexican users see “Gulf of Mexico.” Elsewhere, Google identifies it as “Gulf of Mexico (Gulf of America).”
But nobody twists reality as much as Trump. Two other examples:
He says the United States has given Ukraine $350 billion in aid, and European countries just $100 billion. Germany’s Kiel Institute, which tracks aid, says the U.S. total is $125 billion, mostly spent manufacturing armaments in the United States, and Europe’s total is $259 billion.
Trump claims “a massive mandate from the American people, like hasn’t been seen in many years.” He actually led Democrat Kamala Harris by 1.5 percent in the popular vote.
Trump repeats these and other lies so often it’s possible he has convinced himself they are true. But that doesn’t make them so.
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