Trump: ‘What you’re seeing and… reading is not what’s happening’
WASHINGTON » “What you’re seeing and what you’re reading is not what’s happening.”
When the history of the Trump era is written, this quotation from our president will play a prominent role in explaining the dysfunction of his administration. Trump was talking about media coverage of his trade war, but also his belief that reality itself can be denied and big lies can sow enough confusion to keep the truth from taking hold.
Trump knows this dulls the impact of any new revelation. Old falsehoods simply get buried under new ones. Take the recording of his September 2016 conversation with his onetime lawyer Michael Cohen released Tuesday night.
Cohen’s attorney put out the tape, which, as The Washington Post reported, shows Trump “appeared familiar with a deal that a Playboy model made to sell the rights to her story of an alleged affair with him.” Karen McDougal sold her tale to the National Enquirer’s parent company, American Media Inc. The tabloid never ran her account, clearly protecting Trump from this embarrassing tale before the election, although its management has denied this intention.
Trump’s lawyer Rudy Giuliani insisted the recording portrayed a Trump who “doesn’t seem that familiar with anything” discussed. This was, shall we say, an eccentric interpretation of the conversation.
Obfuscated in this back-andforth is the fact that four days before the 2016 election, Hope Hicks, Trump’s campaign spokeswoman, denied the affair altogether and said the campaign had “no knowledge” of any payoff.
The big lie strategy extends to policy and national security as well.
The Commerce Department, which runs the census, claimed earlier this year it added a citizenship question in response to the Justice Department’s desire to enforce the 1965 Voting Rights Act.
Six former Census Bureau directors under both Republican and Democratic presidents urged Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross not to include it.
The fear is that many immigrants would be reluctant to answer the census if the question were part of it, leading to an undercounting of places with substantial foreign-born populations.
But for the Trump administration, this is the goal. Undercounting immigrants would shift political power — and federal money — largely to Republican areas that have lower immigrant populations.
And documents turned over this week in a lawsuit against the addition of the citizenship question showed Ross lobbied for its inclusion much earlier and more actively than his later sworn testimony indicated. “Lying to Congress is a serious criminal offense, and Secretary Ross must be held accountable,” said Rep. Elijah Cummings, D-Md. Trump’s former chief strategist Steve Bannon had also pushed for the question when he was in the White House.
Distorting data collection is an attack on the truth, too.
With new and unhinged narratives to displace fact, Trump has no equal. Thus did the man who stood next to Vladimir Putin when the Russian leader said he wanted Trump to win in 2016 declare this week — with no evidence whatsoever — that Russia “will be pushing very hard for the Democrats” in this fall’s election.
Most of the country doesn’t believe him. Trump’s core support is down to 25 percent among those who strongly approve of him, as measured in Wednesday’s NPR/PBS News Hour/Marist Poll.
The bad news is that among Republicans his strong approval number stands at 62 percent. Trump’s hope of clinging to power rests on the assumption that he can continue inventing enough false storylines to keep his party at bay.