By the time Donald Trump scooted out of Washington on January 20, 2021, the Washington Post had counted a mere 30,573 false or deceptive claims by The Great Swamp Drainer throughout his time in workplace.
Even that was an undercount, as a result of the Post determined early on that it might solely depend one falsehood per subject for every speech, tweet or interview, lest its laptop crash underneath the sheer quantity of fabrications. Thus, for instance, if in any given speech Trump uttered a number of lies, say, about his taxes or supposed fee thereof, or about how COVID was a hoax and was scheduled to shortly disappear, or about how folks stored telling him he was a genius, the Post solely marked him down for a single falsehood.
Even with that limitation, nevertheless, Trump didn’t solely set the world document for lies for any determine, public or non-public, indicted or unindicted. When it involves dishonesty, he’s in a galaxy unto himself.
But that isn’t all he has achieved. He has impressed numberless others within the Republican Party to emulate him – by repeating his fraudulent nonsense that the 2020 election was “stolen” or “rigged,” for example, or that Joe Biden is “corrupt,” or all different method of hogwash. It as soon as was that these holding themselves out as ethical adhered to the adage “Thou shalt not lie.” In the Republican Party that Donald Trump created in his picture, it’s now “Thou shalt not lie unless thou hopes that no one knoweth the truth.”
For the entire dishonest election deniers and different genuine-gold-watch-for-only-one-dollar hucksters that rule the social gathering of Trump, nobody fairly embodies the depths to which the Grand Old Party has sunk a couple of George Santos, the Trump acolyte and titanically brazen fraudster who flipped to purple a historically blue Congressional district on Long Island by mendacity his and everybody else’s socks off.
Santos claimed to have attended the distinguished Horace Mann School within the Bronx. He didn’t. He claimed to have graduated from Baruch College. Nope. He claimed to have labored for Citigroup and Goldman Sachs. News to them.
He claimed to be a “proud American Jew” and “Jewish.” He really isn’t, so he now claims that he meant that he was “Jew-ish’ – no matter meaning. He claimed his mom’s household have been Holocaust survivors. They weren’t. He claimed he had a family-owned actual property portfolio of 13 properties. He was off by 13 properties.
He claimed that he based a serious animal rescue charity. Sounds nice, however the IRS has no document of it. He claimed that his firm “lost 4 employees” on the June 2016 Pulse nightclub bloodbath in Orlando, Florida, however a New York Times overview of the obituaries of the 49 precise victims of that bloodbath doesn’t assist this.
It seems that Santos admitted utilizing stolen checks and a phony title to steal cash from a retailer in Brazil, the place he lived on the time. Though he denies this, there’s the little matter of that admission. And there are query marks in his monetary reporting bigger than Trump Tower. He has stopped providing even essentially the most pathetic responses to journalists’ questions, as a result of there look like no responses, and since somebody sensible has apparently advised him that mendacity about lies is dangerous enterprise.
Santos finds himself underneath state and federal investigation, however that appears unlikely to cease the Republican Congressional management from welcoming him into your House of Representatives. This ought to shock nobody: the GOP, in spite of everything, is the social gathering of Marjorie Taylor Greene, Lauren Boebert, Matt Gaetz and the social gathering’s lead elephant, Donald Trump himself.
George Santos offers each indication of being a sociopath, however let’s not mince phrases: the social gathering that he helps and that helps him is dominated by sociopath enablers and sociopath defenders. There are nonetheless first rate folks all through the Republican Party however they don’t run the present. America gained’t flip the nook till the indecent ones are run out of city on a rail.
Jeff Robbins writes on politics, nationwide safety, human rights and the Mideast.
Source: www.bostonherald.com”