Tuesday, January 1, 2019

Truth, and the President

This is not criticism, just an objective observation and question.

Trump seems to fabricate his own version of truth rather frequently, or at least it seems that way to me.   

He visited our troops in Iraq a few days ago and bragged at length about how he had gotten them a 10% pay raise, about how he had fought against others who had said it should be small.  He went on to say they hadn't had a raise in ten years, so he'd fought on their behalf and won and given them a huge raise.  He made similar claims at the Naval Academy in May, "First time in 10 years. We got you a big pay increase. First time in over 10 years. I fought for you. That was the hardest one to get, but you never had a chance of losing."

The claims in each case were false.  The truth -- like every previous year, the military is getting their regular cost of living raise, 2.6% this year.  There was no plan or discussion for a larger raise
.  Just one among many inaccurate statements on most major issues.

Update: 02 Jan 19 -- He claimed to have fired Secretary of Defense James Mattis.  False.  Mattis formally resigned in protest against policy decisions by the president.  

Recent analyses of his public comments indicate the rate of significant false statements by our president has increased from two or so per day during his first year to four or five times that number.  Multiple sources are available for such review.

We all perhaps agree with some of the decisions he's made, but if facts and truth aren't part of the process, where does that leave us?  I'm stumped trying to understand why an intelligent person would do that on virtually every significant issue, especially when he had advisors with facts available.     

Objectively, what do we see?

Many are blindly accepting his statements.