Throughout his campaign, Donald Trump told hundreds if not thousands
of lies and passed them off as truth. Then, when Hillary Clinton told the
truth, he wrote her off as a liar. At first it was pretty easy to tell the lies
from the truth because we had fact checkers to tell us what was real.
Soon, however, the Trump campaign got the idea to claim that
fact checkers were liars, too, and then Trump surrogate Scottie Nell Hughes made
her famous statement that “there are no facts” any longer. The implication of
that statement was clear: If there are no facts, we don’t need fact checkers,
so pay no attention to what they say.
That evolved into “fake news” – which is another whole story
in and of itself – and now we have advanced to the latest and greatest administration
spin – the concept of “alternative facts.”
Did you think you saw a small crowd at the inauguration? Did
you see it with your own eyes? No, sorry, but you didn’t see that. What you saw
was an alternative fact.
Did the administration lie about ridership on the Metro
being greater than any previous inauguration, when it really wasn’t? Not a lie.
Alternative fact.
The size of the women’s marches? Alternative facts.
Attendance at the Thursday night concert? Alternative fact.
How about those photographs of the inauguration that show vast
areas in front of the capitol with few if any people, unlike past inaugurations
where those areas were completely filled? Alternative facts.
Spicer “explained” that there was a white covering on the
Mall to protect the grass, which “accentuated empty spaces” in photos of the
crowd, but he still claimed there were more people there. (Apparently, they
were all white people dressed in all white clothing that blended into the white
tarps and made them invisible.) Or else
it was an alternative fact.
On Saturday, Trump met with the CIA, which he inexplicably
believed was part of the military. He patted himself on the back a few times,
told how many times he was on the cover of Time Magazine and went on his way
after telling a few lies of his own. He claimed that his crowd “looked like a
million, a million and a half people.”
To be fair, maybe it did look that way to the world’s
biggest narcissist, but best estimates put the crowd at 250,000. They had
almost that many protesters in New York, and many more than that in Los Angeles…but
those are only alternative facts.
Even our vice president had to lie when he introduced Trump
to the CIA. “I’ve never met anyone who is a greater strategic thinker,” Mike
Pence said. That’s either a lie or Pence needs to meet more people. I doubt
that’s true of a man who can’t hold a thought long enough to finish a sentence,
and who can’t advocate a policy position for more than one day at a time.
Now, today, I’m reading tweets and news stories and Facebook
posts from both sides of the divide and I still don’t know what’s true.
On Saturday, I heard someone proudly say that women were
marching and demonstrating on all seven continents. I thought she misspoke and jokingly
said I was waiting to see footage of the march in Antarctica. Lo and behold, what
pops up but a photo of men and women on a boat holding anti-Trump signs,
supposedly in the waters off Antarctica.
Was that real or not? I don’t know. How would I know?
I read a tweet, supposedly from Trump, that everyone who
receives anything from the federal government is going to be drug tested. That
would include the millions of us on Medicare and Social Security and food stamp
recipients, for example, but also every member of Congress, all of Trump’s appointees,
every soldier and every government employee. Could that be true?
It’s not likely, but how would you know? The question isn’t
how you could ever expect to accomplish something like that; the question is did Trump actually say
it? I don’t know.
Then I read that Trump told the CIA he wants to use nukes against ISIS. I
watched his speech to them twice and I never heard him say that. Did I miss it? Was it before
the actual speech began or in the corridor on his way out? Did he even say
this? Is it true or not? I. Don’t. Know.
In fact, I don’t know who to believe about anything now. How
can we have a president who may never tell the truth again, backed up
by a Press Secretary who lies openly and a spokesperson, Kellyanne Conjob, who
says lies are actually “alternative facts?” How can we rely on the news media
who today called Spicer’s lies “falsehoods” and misleading statements instead
of what they really were.
I no longer know what constitutes “truth.” I don’t even know
if truth still exists. Maybe in this alternative reality, with our alternative president
and his alternative staff, all we have left is alternative facts.
Who is left to tell us what is really true?
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