Our view: White House bleeds credibility, one lie at a time

Sometime in the not-too-distant future, the United States could face simultaneous crises, and the word of the White House would be crucial.

Imagine, for example, that special counsel Robert Mueller produces a report for Congress containing evidence alleging that President Donald Trump obstructed justice or laundered money.

At the same time, a critical foreign policy situation arises — perhaps that, according to the administration, Iran has relaunched its nuclear program and a military response is necessary.

Could the White House be believed? Or would the threat of war be a “wag the dog” distraction aimed at drowning out talk of impeachment? If the past few weeks are an indication, Americans couldn’t be sure what to think.

In the still smoldering fiasco created by Trump’s decision to separate families crossing the border, double-talk from the White House abounded, and not just from the president himself.

Initially, White House Chief of Staff John Kelly, Attorney General Jeff Sessions and White House Director of Legislative Affairs Marc Short all described a policy aimed at deterring families from illegally entering the USA.

Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen and White House Counselor Kellyanne Conway, meanwhile, denied such policy existed.

Trump insisted that only Congress could stop the separations — that he couldn’t simply end the practice by executive order — only to do exactly that days later as public anger boiled over. A story by The Washington Post counted 14 times the administration changed its story on the separations scandal.

Most Americans have come to recognize Trump’s long and sordid abuse of facts. In recent weeks, his falsehoods have come even faster and with greater vigor. The Post tracked 3,251 false or misleading claims by Trump in his first 500 days in office. The Toronto Star reported that Trump recently hit a record pace of 15 lies per day.

Over the past weekend alone, reports suggested that North Korea is ramping up and looking for ways to conceal its nuclear program, belying Trump’s assertion two weeks ago: “There is no longer a Nuclear Threat from North Korea.” And Trump denied he had ever pushed House Republicans to pass a certain immigration bill — three days after urging them to do just that, in ALL CAPS, no less.

Sadly, this mendacity now seems to have infected some of the Cabinet officials who counsel and carry out policy, as well as those who speak for Trump.

That’s bad enough during a self-inflicted crisis such as the decision to remove small children from their parents and house them behind chain link fences. But history suggests that the time will almost certainly come when the White House is plunged into a national or international crisis not of its own making, where lives are stake. When that happens and the public is desperate for straight talk, will there be anything left of Oval Office credibility?

It’s hard to be confident that there will. And that is its own crisis.

JIM YOUNG/AFP/GETTY IMAGES Protester in Chicago on Saturday.