A short history of lies by U.S. presidents

Of course leaders prevaricate, but some mistruths have devastating impacts

Walter B. Jones was a 12term Republican congressman from North Carolina. He was so enthusiastic about the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003, and so angry with France for opposing it, that he wanted to rename french fries “freedom fries.”

But not long into the war, Jones began to question it. He came to recognize that the assumptions that had led to the war (that Iraq was linked to al-Qaida and that it had weapons of mass destruction) were fabricated.

He felt deceived. He felt manipulated. As an act of contrition, he wrote 12,000 letters to the families of the war dead. Jones, who died last week, said he would take his guilt to his grave.

The war in Iraq is the most recent example of a lying, misguided president creating a foreign policy fiasco. George W. Bush wanted to depose Saddam Hussein, a butcher who used chemical gas on his people, and he either ignored the evidence or distorted it.

Of course, presidents lie; it is the degree that matters. Franklin Roosevelt prevaricated about America’s neutrality before the Second World War, but he was arming a beleaguered Britain. John F. Kennedy prevaricated over the Bay of Pigs, and was not honest about his health. Nor was an ailing FDR in his last years, though their stoicism through pain ennobled them both.

There are lies and there are lies. Lyndon Johnson lied claiming he was winning in Vietnam while telling others it was a lost cause. Richard Nixon lied about Vietnam too (after he had run for office in 1968 secretly urging North Vietnam to reject a peace deal with LBJ, an act of treason).

Nixon lied over Watergate and it undid him. Bill Clinton lied about sex. His presidency survived but his reputation did not.

What we see in all those instances is the persuasiveness of the office. Even when Johnson was lying about Vietnam, or Bush about Iraq, or Nixon about Watergate, many Americans still believed them. After all, isn’t the president America’s moral leader?

“How long?” asked Dr. Martin Luther King. “Not long because no lie can live forever.”

In most things, that’s true. Then again, a lie does not have to live forever. It just has to live long enough to serve a president’s purpose.

Telling Americans he was close to winning the war allowed Johnson to send more soldiers to Indochina and drop more bombs. Lies allowed Nixon to kill 20,000 Americans in Vietnam and win re-election in 1972 before Watergate caught up to him.

That’s the trouble with lies; the truth will get out, eventually, but often it’s too late. The damage is done.

And so we come to Donald Trump, who lies as casually as combing his hair.

He has sewn a web of lies, untruths and falsehoods about the southern border and made of them “a national emergency.” In his case, the truth is out.

But here’s the real sadness: The presidency allows a president to get away with it. Americans do not trust the president they way they once trusted school principals and police chiefs. But many Americans still trust them because a president is commander-in-chief.

So, Trump keeps repeating “invasion” and “criminals” and “caravans” and “drugs” and “angel moms.” He knows his own government’s figures do not support his claims (illegal crossings are the lowest in a generation) and so does his adviser, Stephen Miller. But Miller claims, “You don’t know what you don’t know.”

And Trump has his own truth, untethered to facts: “I know what I know,” he says.

And because you are the president, who can reach millions on Twitter, fill the television networks, command the world’s biggest megaphone, you will be believed, at least by some, if you just keep repeating it.

Anyone who challenges you is lying. They, not you, are the purveyors of “fake news.” But at some point, over immigration, your ties to Russia, or your taxes, there will be a reckoning.

For Donald Trump, pride goeth before the wall, and truth goeth before the fall. Andrew Cohen is a journalist, professor and author of Two Days in June: John F. Kennedy and the 48 Hours That Made History.