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August 16, 2017

Trump Lies? Really?

I keep seeing posts similar to this in my FB feed:

"In my lifetime have I never seen or heard of a President being scrutinized over every word he speaks, humiliated by the public to the point of wanting to hurt someone, slander, ridicule, insulted, lied to, threatened to murder him, threatened to rape our Beautiful First Lady, and have his children also insulted and humiliated." (This is a direct quote pulled from one of the most recent posts on FB.)

Really? "In [your] lifetime"? I guess you must have died before President Obama, eh? Because most of that stuff comes up within milliseconds of a Google search for Obama. Obama was threatened with death often (remember all those effigies burned and hanged? What about those carrying signs saying he should be assassinated? What about Ted Nugent's repeated calls for Obama's death?); slandered (the whole birther movement, among others); ridiculed, lied to, and insulted (too many times and topics to even list here, and most often by the Republican leadership in Congress); Michelle was threatened with rape, death, and racist name calling on a regular basis. For the most part, most people seemed to stay away from threatening or attacking the Obama daughters, so I guess that point stands out from the above.

I get it: you are a Republican, a conservative, or simply just a fan of Trump. You want to defend him. That's fine. But why say things that are so patently untrue and so easy to prove false? Is your memory so short?

There are plenty of things you can slam Obama for that are legitimate. You may not have agreed with the choices he made or the direction he took the country. But, why do you feel the need to exaggerate, lie, or otherwise overstate how bad your candidate has it when we literally just stopped eight years of some of the worst examples of all of that?

The other issue I have is that Trump brings most of it on himself. He makes wildly false statements, and then people get upset when the news and individuals call him on it. He exaggerates things that are easily proven as exaggerations, and people get upset when he's called on it. He simply makes stuff up out of whole cloth and, when the news calls on him to provide so much as one shred of proof for these stories, people get upset. Really? But they can't remember the exact same thing happening to Obama at nearly every speech he made? How about that famous time one of the Republicans interrupted his State of the Union speech by yelling "You lie!" at the top of his lungs? Or that time that the President called the Republican leadership into the Oval Office, talked with them about the health care vote, they were shown on video both entering and leaving the White House, and yet they claimed to not go at all, let alone talk with the President that day?

I don't care which party is in the White House. When a President lies, he should be called on it. Anyone who threatens the President with harm or death should be investigated by the Secret Service and possibly incarcerated. A President's words should always be scrutinized.

Simply put: If Trump is going to lie so often, so easily, about so many easily proved things, then he gets what he deserves.