Opinion | Zephyr Teachout
Evan Vucci/AP/File
President Donald Trump.
As a presidential candidate
last year, Donald Trump said, “I could stand in the middle of Fifth
Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn’t lose voters.” He didn’t shoot
anyone, but proved that he could say whatever he wanted and still become
president, without apology or explanation.
This week, when he
suddenly fired FBI Director James Comey, Trump made a version of the
same boast. The administration said publicly that Trump fired him for
his handling of Clinton’s e-mails. But everybody understood that what he
was really saying was, “I can fire the head of the FBI, give a
ludicrous reason, and nothing will happen.” The ludicrousness of the
reason was not a mistake on his part — it is an essential part of the
power play. Trump doesn’t lie the way that other American politicians lie. This is the insight of Masha Gessen, a Russian and American journalist who is bringing her decades of studying the Kremlin to bear on modern American politics.
Normally, politicians lie because they want to persuade us of the truth of what they are saying. A candidate for Congress will claim that he earned a medal of honor when he did not, so that we will love and revere him. A mayor will claim crime is down, hiding the numbers that show the opposite, so that we will believe he is protecting us and reelect him. When we catch them in a lie, they lose credibility, and we vote them out of office.
Read more: https://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/2017/05/11/trump-and-art-lie/YHclJB4tnsa8WLK8tluMlO/story.html?p1=Article_Trending_Most_Viewed
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