Anna Rascouët-Paz relates an explanation (from someone who worked in a past administration) for Trump press secretary Spicer’s repeated lies about inaugural crowd size. It’s spot on: For more on a disinformation strategy based on insisting that nothing is knowable, see The Russian Conspiracy on Behalf of Conspiracy Theorist Donald Trump (“there is a coherent pattern…
Mendacity
Foreign Affairs, Mendacity, Putin
Why the Kremlin Lies With Abandon
by JOHN ADAMS •
Mendacity, Trump
Conway’s, and Trump’s, Post-Empirical Lies
by JOHN ADAMS •
Lawrence Downes describes Kellyanne Conway, and Trump, correctly as bald-faced liars, in Trump, Trapped in His Lies, Keeps Lying. Sad! They’ve a certain kind of lie, though: one that rests in the idea that nothing’s outwardly determinable, and that, in fact, there are no discernible facts. See, along these lines, For Mr. Trump, It’s STEM,…
Mendacity, Trump
Trump: Three Tweets, Three Lies
by JOHN ADAMS •
Summary first, from Greg Sargent, on Trump’s three lies in three tweets: To recap: Lie No. 1 is that thousands of U.S.-based Muslims celebrated 9/11. Lie No. 2 is that the disabled reporter’s original story backed Trump and that the reporter backtracked on it. Lie No. 3 is that Trump didn’t mock that disabled reporter…
Education, Mendacity, Science/Nature, Technology, Trump
For Mr. Trump, It’s STEM, Schwem, Whatever…
by JOHN ADAMS •
Embed from Getty Images In response to a question about whether state-sponsored hacking against an American political party should go unpunished, Donald Trump grew expansive, giving his typically thoughtful perspective on science, technology, engineering, mathematics, and (even) epistemology: “I think we ought to get on with our lives. I think that computers have complicated lives very…
Mendacity, Politics, Reasoning, Twitter
The Post-Truth Crowd
by JOHN ADAMS •
Scottie Nell Hughes, a CNN political commentator and the political editor of Right Alerts, blithely declares that we’re in a post-truth era, where facts don’t exist apart from opinion: “It is an idea of an opinion. On one hand I hear half the media saying that these are lies but on the other half there are…