The pot and the kettle

These are the seven stages of Trump: mildly amusing, entertaining, bombastic, outlandish, offensive, disgusting, ludicrous.   This week he achieved the really ludicrous—he called Hillary Clinton a liar!  Now this is the guy who presented a big problem for Politifact because he has told so many outlandish lies they had difficulty determining their 2015 Lie of the Year.

Here is what the Pulitzer Prize winning fact checker said when awarding this dubious honor:

“In considering our annual Lie of the Year, we found our only real contenders were Trump’s -- his various statements also led our Readers’ Poll. But it was hard to single one out from the others. So we have rolled them into one big trophy.

To the candidate who says he’s all about winning, PolitiFact designates the many campaign misstatements of Donald Trump as our 2015 Lie of the Year.”

PolitiFact rightly deemed Hillary’s debate statement “ISIS is going to people showing videos of Donald Trump insulting Islam and Muslims in order to recruit more radical jihadists" as false because no evidence has emerged to support it.

I would guess that it did not earn a Pants on Fire because there is an element of reasonable assumption behind it.  It is a well-known fact, yes fact, that ISIS uses declarations of animosity towards Islam as justification to wage war on America and to recruit new jihadists.  Whether they produced a video specifically showing Trump spewing out his anti-Muslim venom or not is somewhat beside the point.  Maybe they will or maybe they already have, but Trump branding Hillary as a liar over a phantom video is almost comical.  Remember Trump insisting he saw a video of thousands in New Jersey cheering when the Twin Towers went down?   He still insists that is true but wants an apology from Clinton.  Go figure.

Right wingers have a tendency to interpret their own reality.   I recently posted a Politifact article comparing all the presidential candidates’—Republican and Democrat—truthfulness in campaign statements.  The item was entitled:  All Politicians Lie.  Some Lie More Than Others.  Ben Carson ranked the worst and, believe it or not, Bill Clinton the best.  Trump was the second biggest liar and Hillary ranked fourth among the most truthful.   (Obama ranked third most truthful.) My post drew this reaction from a right-winger friend:  “Is this truly fact or liberal opinion?”

Daniel Patrick Moynihan’s famous statement, “Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts” was actually first expressed in 1946 by American financier Bernard M. Baruch who said, “Every man has a right to his own opinion, but no man has a right to be wrong in his facts.” 

I suppose nothing has changed.  One person’s fact is another person’s opinion.

 Here is a link to the PolitiFact Lie of the Year item:

http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/article/2015/dec/21/2015-lie-year-donald-trump-campaign-misstatements/