If all goes according to plane, I’ll be gawking at the Acropolis as you read this. I was too young to see them build it, and then Athenian democracy died (and then Roman democracy died), but have always wanted to visit.
As I write, Trump has lied, or otherwise mischaracterized the truth, more than 3,000 times since taking the oath of office.
Add in his spokespeople, like Sarah Huckabee Sanders and Rudolph Giuliani, and its thousands more.
Giuliani likened the FBI agents who raided Michael Cohen to Hitler’s stormtroopers, even though he himself was not there to witness the raids. Michael Cohen characterized them as professional, courteous, and respectful.
It is horrifying how casually the President and his people lie.
How thoughtlessly — or deliberately — he plays into people’s fears. (Crime is dramatically down over the quarter century before he took office.)
How he encourages their worst instincts (e.g., praising the “many fine people” carrying tiki torches in Charleston).
This is How Democracies Die.
Do Republicans care?
“Obama lied too,” they retort.
But the New York Times found Trump told 103 separate untruths in his first 10 months (repeating one 20 times still counted as just one), versus just 18 in eight years for Obama — “an average of about two a year for Obama, 124 a year for Trump.”
Another contrast? Obama would generally stop saying things once he learned they were untrue.
Trump dismisses all this as fake news.
The elitist New York Times? The Washington Post? NBC? CBS? “Enemies of the people.”
It’s the National Enquirer and Fox we should look to for the truth. And Devon Nunez and Rudolph Giuliani and Vladimir Putin.
And to Trump himself, of course.
Trump, who kept a book of Hitler’s speeches by his bedside.
The other book to read, along with How Democracies Die — and Jonathan Chait’s compelling analysis of how the Republican Party has changed — is Madeleine Albright’s Fascism: A Warning.
Click here.
