The Party Of Honest Abe Now Stuck With Dishonest Don
Historians see in Trump the biggest liar in presidential politics. Ever.
huffingtonpost.com
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump amps up his attacks on Democratic rival Hillary Clinton as a “liar” at a New Hampshire rally Saturday. Some historians, though, see Trump as the most dishonest presidential candidate in American history.
WASHINGTON – Win or lose this November, Donald Trump is headed for the record books regardless, presidential historians say, albeit with an admittedly dubious achievement: the most falsehood-prone candidate in the two centuries of the republic.
“In American history, we’ve never had a major presidential candidate who fabricated facts with the regularity of Donald Trump,” said Douglas Brinkley, a history professor at Rice University. “He just simply makes up things.”
In the span of a few days last week, Trump falsely claimed that the NFL had sent him a letter complaining about this autumn’s debate schedule, when in fact it had not. He claimed that the Koch brothers had tried to meet with him about offering their support, when in reality they had no interest in doing so. And, most astonishingly, he claimed he had seen a video showing hundreds of millions of dollars being unloaded from a plane in Iran, fabricating embellishments about the video’s provenance, even after his campaign conceded that no such video existed.
Theda Skocpol, a government and sociology professor at Harvard, agreed that Trump’s dishonesties have set a new standard. “Trump lies constantly and shamelessly. I do think he is in new territory,” she said.
</snip> Rest here : huffingtonpost.com |
