XPost: soc.retirement, alt.global-warming, alt.fan.rush-limbaugh   
   From: Graydon_Bigcanoe@kremlin.ru   
      
   Donald Trump lies. He lies all the time.   
      
   He lies effortlessly. He lies shamelessly.   
      
   He lies garishly and promiscuously.   
      
   Before, during, and after the 2016 presidential campaign, Trump   
   has lied repeatedly.   
      
   Trump is unfazed that he has no facts to back up his lies, and   
   he seems not to care about the fact-checks that repeatedly   
   expose his statements to be lies.   
      
   He lies so much that newspapers and TV networks finally felt   
   honor-bound to stop downplaying Trump's lies with niceties and   
   euphemisms —"not backed up by facts" and "not truthful" —and   
   simply started to call them lies.   
      
   Trump's team has generally been equally brazen in their lies.   
   Sean Spicer and Kellyanne Conway repeat and amplify Trump's   
   lies, and they too are apparently unconcerned that their lies   
   are obvious even to a child.   
      
   Reince Priebus bothers to repeat Trump's lies, for example, the   
   lie about Trump's "electoral landslide," not caring that it was   
   in fact the 44th largest margin of victory out of 56   
   presidential elections.   
      
   Most of all, Trump and his team have lied carelessly. Under   
   increasing pressure, however, we are starting to see the   
   emergence of what can only be called careful lying. Not that   
   the careless lies will stop, of course, but it is important to   
   guard against having become dulled by the obvious lying to the   
   more clever lies that some of Trump's people are now deploying.   
      
   Careful lying is not always successful, but it at least   
   embodies an effort to say something that is not literally false   
   in the 2 + 2 = 5 sense of the word. It is an intent to mislead   
   and deceive. It is what perjury statutes try to capture, and   
   what the oath "to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing   
   but the truth" is designed to prevent.   
      
   When reporters and commentators pointedly stipulate that   
   something is not "technically lying," they are talking about   
   lying. We have plenty of synonyms and ways to dress it up, but   
   people know when they have been lied to, and it does not matter   
   if the liar has figured out a way to deceive us without having   
   to make up facts to do so.   
   Related: Neil Buchanan : Do Democrats Want Trump to Stay In   
   Office?   
      
   Trump and Co.'s careless lying has been fed in part by their   
   sense of being untouchable. Now that they are feeling under   
   siege, at least some of the people in the White House have been   
   trying to figure out how to lie to people without ever being   
   confronted with a reporter saying, "You said you were in Akron   
   on Monday, but we have ironclad evidence that you were actually   
   in Albuquerque."   
      
   05_21_Neil_Trump_01 Donald Trump holds up a rubber mask of   
   himself at a campaign rally in the Robarts Arena at the   
   Sarasota Fairgrounds November 7, 2016 in Sarasota, Florida.   
   Neil Buchanan writes that because the lawyers who wrote the   
   letter about Trump's tax returns do not define their terms, we   
   can only guess that they might be covering themselves to be   
   able to say, "Well, we didn't technically lie." Chip   
   Somodevilla/Getty   
      
   Two examples of careful lying from the White House are   
   illustrative of the concept. First, after The Washington Post   
   's blockbuster May 15 scoop that Trump had revealed highly   
   classified information to two top officials of the Russian   
   government, the Administration sent out Trump's national   
   security advisor, H.R. McMaster, to do some careful lying.   
      
   The Post 's Glenn Kessler provides a beautiful rundown of   
   McMaster's willful deceptions. McMaster had (emphasis on the   
   past tense) an enviable record of integrity, so he was careful   
   not to say that up is down or that freedom is slavery. Even so,   
   he made statements that were false and misleading.   
      
   We know this in part because Trump later contradicted McMaster.   
   Whereas McMaster had claimed that The Post 's story "as   
   reported is false," Trump then admitted in a tweet that he had   
   in fact revealed the information to the Russians. McMaster then   
   was reduced to saying that Trump's having done so —something   
   that McMaster had gone to great lengths to convince us had not   
   happened—was "wholly appropriate."   
      
   At one point, McMaster said, “At no time were intelligence   
   sources or methods discussed. And the president did not   
   disclose any military operations that were not already publicly   
   known."   
      
   Kessler correctly describes this as a "classic deflection from   
   the key findings of the report, the PR version of three-card   
   monte."   
      
   In other words, by saying that Trump did not discuss   
   intelligence sources or methods or disclose military   
   operations, McMaster tried to get people to think, "Oh, so I   
   guess nothing bad happened." But Trump did not have to discuss   
   sources or methods in order to disclose non -military   
   operations. If he did that, McMaster could try to claim that he   
   "never really lied." Nonsense.   
      
   Remember what Trump did. In his enthusiasm to impress his   
   boss's associates, he did not say, "Israel told us about this   
   specific way in which they gathered information." He instead   
   gave the Russians enough information that they could deduce the   
   source of the intelligence.   
      
   This is the equivalent of telling someone who is under   
   surveillance that you know verbatim something that she said   
   aloud while sitting alone in her house. You did not tell her   
   that you have her house bugged, but you gave her everything she   
   needs to know to figure it out. And you will have blown your   
   intelligence operation.   
   Related: Neil Buchanan : What Would Trump Have Done If Hillary   
   Had Won?   
      
   Again, many people are likely to split hairs about what   
   McMaster did, saying that it does not quite amount to lying.   
   But there is a reason that "lawyerly" is often used as an   
   insult. "I didn't lie to you about taking your money,   
   sweetheart. I just deceived you." Just because a lie is crafted   
   carefully does not make it true, nor does it make it any less   
   deceptive.   
      
   The second example of careful lying from Team Trump happens to   
   be in my comfort zone: tax law. Pushing back against the idea   
   that Trump's unreleased tax returns contain information tying   
   him to Russian money, the White House recently released a   
   "certified letter" from a private law firm claiming that the   
   last ten years of Trump's tax returns do not show "any income   
   of any type from Russian sources."   
      
   Satisfied? No one should be. The letter, a one-page exercise in   
   deception, was written by two lawyers who "work for a law firm   
   that has extensive ties to Russia and received a 'Russia Law   
   Firm of the Year' award in 2016," according to ABC News. But it   
   is not merely the authorship of the letter that makes it   
      
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   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)