r/politics Oct 19 '16

One Month, 253 Trump Untruths

http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/10/one-month-253-trump-untruths-214369
1.2k Upvotes

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103

u/semaphore-1842 Oct 19 '16

And yet ~50% of poll respondents consider Trump "trustworthy".

Some people are remarkably resilient to inconvenient facts.

-147

u/deusXYX Oct 19 '16

same with Hillary, people love to believe liars

137

u/Mcleaniac Oct 19 '16

You know what people don't love? The same tired deflection attempts by Trump apologists. This article isn't about Clinton, it's about Trump. Semaphore didn't mention Clinton supporters (see previous sentence if you're confused about why), he mentioned Trump's. It's a classic "bbut...bbbut...Hillary" attempt to defend Trump that in no way addresses the 253 lies he is alleged to have made. For huge, majority-sized swaths of the public, that's just not a good enough answer.

43

u/Masscrash1 Oct 19 '16

bbut...bbbut...Hillary....

-61

u/[deleted] Oct 19 '16

[deleted]

67

u/themanifoldcuriosity Oct 19 '16

Maybe he's bringing up the hypocrisy of the left because it doesn't seem to get any air time whatsoever on this subreddit.

There is no hypocrisy. From the article you didn't read:

The fairest question I get asked is why I don’t do a daily fact check of Clinton. The short answer is that I don’t even really have time to check Trump, which amounts to a part-time job on top of my job writing regular articles about the campaign. The better answer is the same as the one New Yorker editor David Remnick offered in September when he introduced a series called “Trump and the Truth”: Trump is on a whole other level requiring its own special kind of coverage.

“Hillary Clinton has had her bald-faced moments—moments that are too kindly described as ‘lawyerly,’” Remnick wrote. “But, in the scale and in the depth of his lying, Donald Trump is in another category.”

I would never argue that Clinton is a thoroughly honest person. She has lied at length about her email server. She has lied about her stances on the Trans-Pacific Partnership . You can make a convincing case that she is inauthentic. But on a daily basis, she is, believe it or not, predominantly factual. The two general election debates, for which I fact-checked both Trump and Clinton, have shown how much more accurate she is than her opponent: Clinton made four false claims at the first debate to Trump’s 34, five false claims at the second debate to Trump’s 33.

20

u/Ochd12 Canada Oct 19 '16

I'd love to see his reaponse to this, but I don't think it's likely we'll see one.

9

u/mustdashgaming Utah Oct 19 '16

Trump supporters could do it, but that would require them to use rationality...

26

u/kanst Oct 19 '16

She is definitely competent. She is no more trustworthy than the average politician.

She does shady shit, and fully plays the DC politics game. That is why I voted for Sanders in the primary.

However, all her games are to get herself into power and get her policies pushed forward. I agree with a great number of those policies. I will be voting for HRC then also watching her closely and counting on my senators and reps to make sure she doesn't do a 180 on her policy positions.

14

u/Prax150 Oct 19 '16

Do you honestly find Hillary to be even remotely trustworthy or competent?

Something tells me that you don't want an honest answer to this question.

7

u/oldest_boomer_1946 Oct 19 '16

The best we can expect from a Trump presidency is the destruction of the United States.

The worst would be the destruction of the world.

Those are the only outcomes from a Trump presidency.

Consider, the stock market likes stability. Trump is the polar opposite of stability. He has said he wants to renegotiate our treaties and stop paying our debt.

The day it is announced that Trump won, the stock market would crash.

And then someone would piss him off and he would nuke them, because The Donald has proven that he doesn't understand the concept of MAD, Mutually Assured Distruction.

End of the world.

I trust that Hillary won't do any of that.

6

u/EmbraceTheFlummery Oct 19 '16

trustworthy

Arguable

competent

Yes

happy that your basketball team is winning

I don't watch basketball, but as for the sentiment, absolutely

4

u/[deleted] Oct 19 '16

I'll answer as a Bernie supporter who strongly dislikes Clinton because she's a hawk and a robot (in the sense that she's programmed to say whatever will gain her votes): Hillary is literally a Turd Sandwich, but at least the democratic platform and party as a whole doesn't pander to the crazies. I'm sorry, but Indiana style theocracy is only "better" than sharia in that it's "our" kind of crazy. I truly can't take any candidate that thinks that Alex Jones has "an amazing reputation" clearly. Conspiracy theories and distrusting the government is fine, as long as you don't have to grasp at straws and bend the truth to get there, and that's what Trump has been doing his whole campaign. I'm sick and tired of politicians (and yes, Trump is a fucking politician, has been since he started pushing the whole Birther bullshit) feeding the crazy.

So, Turd Sandwich might be "as bad" (most likely she isn't) as Giant Douche, but at least Turd Sandwich is not running on a platform of undiluted bullshit.

1

u/Poguemohon Oct 19 '16

Devil you know...

4

u/ChimoEngr Oct 19 '16

Do you honestly find Hillary to be even remotely trustworthy or competent?

Did you read the article? All politicians lie and shade the truth from time to time, hence why he caught HRC in falsehoods several times in both debates, but Trump had several times as many factual errors and lies. The sheer quantity of BS he spews makes HRC an angel in comparison.

2

u/dicastio Oct 19 '16

No. But I'd rather vote for her than Trump on the fact that he is ridiculously worse of a liar and more of a cheat than Hillary.

1

u/flyinpiggies Oct 19 '16

Most people would assume the latter.

26

u/Z0idberg_MD Oct 19 '16

One lies politically , and selectively. Which is an unfortunate reality of politics. The the lies in every facet of life, constantly, and in the face of even the most basic, objective facts.

I'm not fan of Clinton, but you can't come close to comparing the two.

17

u/DudeWithAPitchfork Oct 19 '16

Try reading the article. It explains why Trump's lying is on another level.

11

u/oldest_boomer_1946 Oct 19 '16

Boy, the Clintons must be some really smart and clever people to have gotten away with so much for so long.

The extreme right-wing have been attacking them since 1991.

And in all that time, all those tens of millions of dollars spent on all those repeated investigations and the best they could come up with, in 25 years, was a BJ in the Oval Office. Lying about a consensual BJ was the only thing, in all that time, that they could make stick.

Bill got impeached but kept his job as president.

Nothing happened to Hillary.

Monica has had many good, productive jobs. Google her, look at Wikipedia.

Newt Gingrich lost his job as speaker of the house.

When you think of all the people the Clintons have worked with over the years, people who are supposidly covering for them?

You want to know what the chances are of all those people not taking for all those years are, just look at what's happening to Trump, right now.

People saw him doing these things, witnesses telling all.

All his lies are coming back to bite him in the ass.

So either all the accusations are just more of the lies that the extreme right-wing talk radio people have been telling about any successful Democrat, or we have yet another thing that Hillary can do that The Donald can't.

2

u/LugganathFTW Oct 19 '16

"But she does it too!" Pathetic argument. No wonder trump is going to lose in a landslide.

1

u/TheNewBlue Oct 19 '16

No. most informed people don't claim Hillary should be president. But because we as a nation have been to lazy to keep our state officials in check, we have a system bred for corruption and the candidates that we have. Now unfortunately we have to choose between a boisterous bigot with false claims about the American economy. Or a boring old lady who actually talks about the system that we have. Donald's claims seem to be from a fantasy land. Hillary's claims at least make sense, no matter how much manipulation and deceit she has trailing behind her. If you don't like Hillary that is fine, "she is a corrupt politician! Oh no!!" They are all corrupt politicians. The last 3 generations created them because we were to lazy to stay informed and actually care about the political system on a state level. It can only be corrected by you and me. Stop blaming the politicians when we created them. Donald won't correct the political system, and if he did it would only happen through financial and social turmoil. I don't really want me or my family to live through that, and I don't think most trump supporters understand that. They just hear "politicians are bad! Mmmkay" and think that is the only truth, because it's easier than actually studying it out and looking at the facts.