On Thursday, New York Times columnist David Leonhardt tweeted out his take on President Trump’s penchant for untruth. He did so in the most self-discrediting way: by blasting out a chart comparing Trump’s dissimulations with President Obama’s. Suffice it to say that the chart is utter bunk:
According to The New York Times, then, Trump has lied more in 10 months than Obama lied in 8 years. That’s insipid. According to the Times, Obama only told six lies in his first year, compared to Trump’s 103 — and he only told six lies his entire second term. Furthermore, the Times states:
We have used the word “lies” again here, as we did in our original piece. If anything, though, the word is unfair to Obama and Bush. When they became aware that they had been saying something untrue, they stopped doing it. Obama didn’t continue to claim that all Americans would be able to keep their existing health insurance under Obamacare, for example, and Bush changed the way he spoke about Iraq’s weapons capability.
Except, of course, that Obama continued saying that if you liked your doctor, you could keep your doctor … for years.
Here are the kinds of lies the press counted for Trump:
FEB. 12, 2017.“Just leaving Florida. Big crowds of enthusiastic supporters lining the road that the FAKE NEWS media refuses to mention. Very dishonest!” (The media did cover it.)
FEB. 24, 2017.“By the way, you folks are in here — this place is packed, there are lines that go back six blocks.” (There was no evidence of long lines.)
Oh, come on. Meanwhile, many of the lies Obama told according to the Washington Post and Politifact have been completely omitted from the Times list.
This is why Trump gets away with calling the media fake news — because the media do the same thing. They call Trump a liar when he’s merely exaggerating or bloviating, and then refuse to call it a lie when Obama did the same. Trump does the same thing in reverse to the media.
Suffice it to say, it’s tough to trust a news organization that insists on the absolute integrity of President Obama in order to bash Trump. This sort of stuff is how the Times made Trump president.