One striking component of former FBI Director James Comey’s testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee last Thursday was his willingness to state straightforwardly a fact that is already obvious: our president is a liar.
In the particular instance, Comey took exception to President Trump’s characterization of the FBI as an agency “in disarray, that it was poorly led,” one of several reasons that Trump gave for firing Comey.
This is a serious charge that shouldn’t be made without evidence; evidently there is none. In fact, Trump’s criticism of Comey’s leadership was contradicted emphatically by recent testimony before the same committee by FBI acting director Andrew McCabe.
With refreshing candor, Comey called Trump’s assertions “lies, plain and simple.” In addition, Comey said that he felt compelled to meticulously and immediately render his conversations with Trump in writing, for fear that Trump might lie about them later.
Of course, Trump wouldn’t be the first president to lie. Thursday’s testimony before the committee reminded me of Eric Alterman’s 2004 book “When Presidents Lie: A History of Official Deception and its Consequences.”
The book is only 447 pages long, so Alterman has to limit his history of presidential lying to Franklin Roosevelt, John Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush. He doesn’t have room to discuss the great fabulator Richard Nixon or the petty prevaricator Bill Clinton.
Or George Washington. Ron Chernow’s 2010 biography of Washington pictures him as an honest and principled man. However, he never chopped down a cherry tree or uttered the famous “I cannot tell a lie.”
And he could indeed tell a lie. When the nation’s capital made a decade-long sojourn in Philadelphia before moving to Washington, D.C., our first president encountered the inconvenient circumstance that Pennsylvania law held that any slave who resided in the state for six consecutive months would automatically be freed.
Thus Washington contrived with wife Martha and others to ensure that some of his most valuable slaves made regular brief excursions back to Mount Vernon to circumvent Pennsylvania’s six-month rule.
This ruse had to be kept secret. Washington wrote to his friend Tobias Lear: “I wish to have it accomplished under pretext that may deceive both them (i.e., the slaves) and the public.”
But all of these presidential liars lied with a purpose, strategic or tactical, and none of them — with the possible exception of Richard Nixon — lost touch with reality.
Trump’s lying seems cut from different cloth. In fact, I’m not the first to note that he may not be lying, at all; he may actually believe much of what he says. And once a liar can no longer recognize or has lost interest in facts, is it even possible to lie?
It’s an interesting distinction, but the nation has more important things to worry about. It’s dangerous to have a president who is unable or unwilling to acknowledge facts that don’t mesh with what he would like to believe.
We could illustrate this in a number of ways, but Trump’s recent withdrawal from the Paris climate accords is a good example. A great deal of his rationale for withdrawing is clearly, unequivocally and demonstrably false. And yet his decision causes considerable harm with no compensating gain, squandering a great deal of American global leadership, as well as what might be our last chance to bring climate change under control.
Certainly some Americans believe that this version of circumstances is overstated. But after five months, the Trump administration shows no signs of achieving any sort of healthy normality, and it’s hard to imagine our nation navigating the next three and a half years without considerable damage, if not catastrophe.
At this point Trump is unlikely to rearrange his own chaotic mental landscape. His lying is merely a symptom of a dangerous disconnection from reality. Of course, all Americans bear responsibility for the condition of our government, but Republicans have a particular obligation to face facts in ways that our president seems unable to do. An unflinchingly honest assessment of Trump’s behavior is essential; our republic depends on it.
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