Steven Mnuchin says Trump didn’t get ‘things wrong at all’ in his coronavirus address.

These guys lie when there’s no need to, and they can’t even make up believable lies.

Everything Trump said is on tape. Trump said, “These prohibitions will not only apply to the tremendous amount of trade and cargo but various other things as we get approval.” As he said that, stock futures were plummeting.

This was not a matter of people misinterpreting what he said. What he said was completely clear and people interpreted the meaning of his words correctly. The problem was that the cargo ban was never an accurate statement of his plan. There was no such plan, so the administration had to issue an immediate correction.

So what happened? What he said was not what was in his prepared speech. Trump is not a proficient reader. He simply fucked up and read the speech wrong. According to the Wall Street Journal, the draft of the speech said, the prohibitions “will not apply” to trade and cargo, rather than they “will not only apply.”

The crazy thing about this is that it’s a “who cares?” issue. Mnuchin could simply have told the truth and all would be soon forgotten. Because of the tweeted correction, we all knew that Trump must have misread the speech, so I would not be typing now if Mnuchin had told the truth, because it would not be news. Everyone makes mistakes. On the other hand, Mnuchin’s lie just causes us to focus on Trump’s mistake.

Furthermore, I think all of these guys need to re-read the story about the boy who cried “wolf.” If they just keep lying about everything, we’re not going to believe them when they decide to accurately convey something important.

6 thoughts on “Steven Mnuchin says Trump didn’t get ‘things wrong at all’ in his coronavirus address.

  1. As far as the “boy who cried wolf” thing, we’re way, way, *way* past the point of no return on that.

    I just assume that everything out of Trump’s mouth is a lie, because, we’ll, it is.

    1. Yes, but it’s tricky because he’s also ignorant.

      When a smart man is a pathological liar, you can assume that everything he says is untrue, but with an ignorant man, he may be so misinformed that he accidentally utters the occasional bit of truth when trying to lie!

  2. Mnuch may actually catch hell from Trump over this. Recreational lying is kind of his thing. Remember “I was born in Germany”? Shine on you crazy shithead…

  3. Trump and Mnuchin are is a wealth creators, which is to say that they are John Galt in the flesh. And you can’t argue with John Galt. Any Rand said so. Whatever they say is a truer truth than mere reality, or something like that. At any rate, Trump’s supporters like hearing it better, and I get the impression that, like Homer Simpson, they blame everyone in the world except themselves for the consequences of their decisions. Heck, that’s a universal human trait. In people under age 10, anyway. And some never get over it. Trump, for one.

  4. It’s because Trump can not be seen making a mistake. Even a harmless one like misreading a line in an address. So he will send his minions out there to tell the world to marvel at the emperor’s new clothes.

  5. 45% approve of the job Trump is doing according to the just released WSJ/NBC poll. The US has an over abundance of simpletons.

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