All the President’s Lies

Traditional media coverage of Donald Trump‘s second inauguration was so obsequious and so normalizing that the average news consumer could easily have missed the essential fact that almost everything he said was a lie.

His inaugural address was full of lies, from beginning to end, based on the false premise that the country is in a shambles and needs to be rescued.

His central message:

My recent election is a mandate to completely and totally reverse a horrible betrayal and all of these many betrayals that have taken place and to give the people back their faith, their wealth, their democracy, and, indeed, their freedom.  From this moment on, America’s decline is over.

But there was no betrayal, the economy is doing fine, the border is quiet, and the threat to democracy and freedom comes from Trump, not his predecessor.

He also spewed a series of lies about immigration, Panama, the extent of his support, and energy prices.

And one of the only things he actually told the truth about was nevertheless belied by the people sitting a few feet away from him.

He said:

For many years, a radical and corrupt establishment has extracted power and wealth from our citizens while the pillars of our society lay broken and seemingly in complete disrepair.

Fact-check: True! But several of the people who have extracted the most power and wealth were sitting in a place of honor in the Capitol Rotunda cheering him on: People like Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, and Rupert Murdoch.

He lied in his unscripted remarks after the inaugural address about everything from windmills (not the most expensive form or energy, quite the contrary) to the 2020 election (not rigged).

He lied in his remarks at the Capital One arena, saying “we won the youth vote by 36 points” (he lost it by 11 points) and warning of IRS agents toting guns (they don’t).

And for nearly an hour, as he signed executive orders and pardons in the Oval Office, he engaged in a rambling, free-associating, lie-filled Q-and-A with a small and sycophantic handful of White House reporters. (Transcripts here and here.)

It was a fascinating window into his very disordered mind, and he lied (or was mistaken) about almost everything he said.

He said the European Union doesn’t take our farm products (it does); he insisted that Spain is a member of the BRICS group (it isn’t); and he said that “in many cases” the most aggressive January 6 rioters “happened to be outside agitators” (they weren’t.)

In short, returned to the spotlight, Trump chose deception over truth-telling.

That should have been the big headline. The lies, put in context, should have been in the leads of the main stories.

Instead, as usual, the fact checking was relegated to sidebars. Some of them weren’t bad – here are fact checks from CNN, the Associated Press, the Washington Post, the New York Times, USA Today – but that’s not enough.

The lead stories reflected more awe than skepticism — or judgment. Peter Baker wrote for the New York Times:

Donald John Trump completed an extraordinary return to power on Monday as he was sworn in as the 47th president of the United States and opened an immediate blitz of actions to begin drastically changing the course of the country and usher in a new “golden age of America.”

Michael D. Shear wrote for the Times:

If his first inaugural address was a relentlessly dark vision of “American carnage,” President Trump made his second one a paean to the power of one person’s ability to rescue a nation — specifically his.

Dan Balz wrote for the Washington Post:

President Donald Trump turned Monday’s traditional Inauguration Day ceremonies into something untraditional. Part State of the Union address and part political pep rally, the 60th presidential inauguration most of all was pure Donald Trump — and an extension of the campaign that restored him to power.

The con is already unraveling, even as the lying patter continues. That’s the story. The traditional media completely missed it.