I’m feeling pretty good about myself this morning.
I came across a news article the other day… it came from the mainstream media, so it’s probably exaggerated and biased, but like they say, where there’s smoke, there’s fire… where a group of reporters had spent the past four years tracking statements made by the President of the United States, and determined that the President had lied, or misstated the facts, approximately 30,573 times over the past four years. The reporters wrote that during the ‘Save America’ speech on January 6, just prior to the mob attack on the Capitol building, the President shared 107 “false or misleading statements” in just that one single speech.
The reporters claimed that if the President repeated the same lie or exaggeration several times in the same speech or tweet, they counted it only once. The total could have been a lot higher.
I’m feeling pretty good about myself because I’ve been working on my ability to tell lies with a straight face, and I think I’m headed in the right direction. Although the President and I have never met — and probably aren’t likely to meet — I view him as The Master, and myself as The Apprentice.
Okay, yes, I’ve taken a few lessons from the mainstream media as well. But think about it… 30,573 false or misleading statements, in just 48 months. That comes out to more than 20 false or misleading statements per day, seven days a week, 24 hours per day. If we deduct 8 hours a day for normal sleep, that’s pretty darn amazing.
And the reporters were counting only his public statements. They weren’t including the private lies and misleading statements the President probably made to his friends and family.
Legendary. That’s how I would classify the President. Not just world-class; more like “universe-class”.
I know I could never come close the the example that’s been laid out before me. Thinking back over the past four years, I’ve probably made fewer than 2,000 false or misleading statements, including the untrue claims I’ve made privately to friends and family. (I probably didn’t need to count those, but they made the number look bigger.)
And I’m a paid humor writer, for heaven’s sake! I get paid to say write things that aren’t true.
That bears repeating. I get paid to say write things that aren’t true.
Except that’s a baldfaced lie. I’m actually not a ‘paid’ humor writer. I write this stuff purely for my own entertainment. (Maybe if I were better at making false and misleading claims — the editor would see fit to pay me, at least a stipend. At least some coffee money.)
Which is to say, I’m actually not feeling pretty good about myself this morning. That was another lie.
So, hey… two misleading claims already, and I’ve written barely 400 words. But I’ve got to do a heck of a lot better, if I want to make it into the big leagues.
Three days prior to his inauguration in January 2016, the President sat for an interview with the new magazine Axios, and was, I think, incredibly frank and open, when asked about lying. He reportedly told Axios:
I don’t like to lie, no. I don’t like to lie, no. It’s something that — it’s not something that I would like to be doing.
The Axios interviewer followed up, “Is it ever OK to lie?”
I don’t want to answer the question because it’s — it gets to, you know, a different level than what we’re talking about for this interview.
I felt sad reading this interview. I have to assume that Axios misquoted the President. I assume that Axios was lying, but in a sloppy, careless fashion. There is no way the President could have said these things.
Because it’s obvious to all of us that the the President absolutely loves making false claims and misleading statements. He’s been making an average of 20 per day, publicly, for four years. With no regrets.
If only I could be like him. Unafraid. Totally committed to perjury. Fearless in the face of falsehood and fraud.
I once believed the mass media was an example to follow. But I have seen the light.