I have to give Trump credit. Over the course of his presidency he has learned to make his lies more subtle. His exact words were, “I can reveal that I believe it would have been four embassies.” If you think about it, that may not be a lie at all.
This is tantamount to saying “I can reveal that I believe in God,” as opposed to “I can reveal that God exists.” He wasn’t revealing that there was evidence to establish a fact, but only that he believed it, which may be true. Without the ability to read his mind, it’s not possible to conclude whether he believed it or not.
Best President Ever! Has made Democrat’s into fools.
Yep, getting the Democrats to impeach him was a masterstroke, Clint. That’s some real 1-D chess right there!
Pathetic, ignorant, and illiterate. Anything else we should know about you?
So that’s your standard, is it? Make the other party look like fools? Not improve the lives of all Americans? Not improve the prestige of the country in the world’s eyes?
Sorry, that’s been the standard of Republicans for years. They rather spend trillions to blow up other countries or bail out huge corporations than give it to help their own citizens.
It’s really been the logic for years. Don’t let government interfere in my greed through 1%’ers accumulation of wealth, destruction of others, false sense of protection, or applying my judgment of how people should live their lives to law. Question how much worse they can make other lives, you’re questioning your ‘freedom.’
You know, the country of freedom. Free to either help the ultra rich live like false gods, or starve. Free to have your son or daughter get massacred in a school so people can protect their ‘hobby’ and false sense of security. Free to throw CO2, mercury, plastic, and a ton of other shit into the environment. Free to enforce on someone else that they should be obeying their version of Christianity.
Yeah we know their motto by now. Basically think about every shit thing in this world and they’re the party to promote them.
Again, you can’t call it a lie. He never stated there was evidence or logic to back it up. He only stated that he believed it, and we don’t know what he really believed because we can’t read his mind.
Given that he has been known to believe some truly impossible things with no support for his beliefs, it is entirely possible that he did really believe four embassies were in danger, and therefore told the truth when he said “I believe it would have been four embassies.”
The most difficult issue when trying to figure out Trump’s most baffling statements is determining whether he really believes something false, and just doesn’t know any better, or whether he actually realizes the truth and is just lying.
In a couple of cases when he was caught in the act, we know he was lying. When he was asked whether he knew about the payment to Stormy Daniels, for example, and when he was asked who wrote on the hurricane map, and when he makes his usual claims that many people called him to say he was right about something he obviously bungled (Syria withdrawal and Suleimani briefing, for two examples). He certainly must know those are falsehoods. But in other cases, things are not so clear. Did he truly believe his inauguration crowd was bigger than Obama’s? Maybe he did. As I understand it, a characteristic of narcissistic personality disorder is it that the afflicted truly believe their delusions.
The most interesting question in this regard is his original issue when he was a one-issue candidate. Did he really believe Obama was born outside the USA, or was he just manipulating that belief to create a base of support? I go back-and-forth on that one.
You’d be interested in the old British T.V Show Yes, Minister/Yes, Prime Minster if you haven’t seen them already.
After the Minister, James Hacker, in the first series becomes Prime Minister, his Deputy (Permanent Secretary) Sir Humphrey Appleby wants to get a Minister fired so he informs Hacker that he’s heard that the Minister was plotting against him. Hacker’s top assistant, the Principal Private Secretary, Bernard Woolley is listening in and, after Hacker leaves, talks to Sir Humphrey.
Woolley: So, it was true that the Minister was plotting against the Prime Minister!
Appleby: It was?
Woolley: You just said it was true.
Appleby: I said I heard it might be true.
Woolley: But, Anything might be true!
Appleby, Very good Bernard, you’re learning.
It’s like Hunter Thompson’s famous reporting that there was a rumor going around that a politician named Edmund Muskie was taking a rare hallucinogenic drug called Ibogaine. When called on it, Thompson replied that he never wrote that Muskie was taking the drug, but only reported that the rumor existed, and he was 100% certain his claim was accurate – because he had made the rumor up and spread it himself!
Going by what the Defense Secretary said, that he didn’t see any specific intelligence about embassies, but that he believed embassies would be the target, it’s possible Trump wasn’t lying. It seems to me the intelligence community could have been predicting that attacks were imminent without knowing where the attacks would take place. It’s also possible members of Trump’s national security team might have speculated that embassies might be targeted.
Or Trump made the whole thing up and the Defense Secretary was trying to minimize his contradiction without claiming intelligence existed that did not.
Trump’s brain operates at right angles to reality. “Fact” and “truth” are simply things you claim about things that are to your advantage to be a fact or true. This status can be changed instantly if the balance of advantage shifts. It all depends on what you can get people to believe, and if they WANT to believe you, that is just about anything.
IMO, of course. Other people have far more insight into Trump and better analyses of his approach to truth.