These aren’t headlines Donald Trump wants to wake up to this morning. Some outlets are finally doing their job — using the word “lie” to describe Trump’s deliberate rejection of reality. First up, Margaret Hartmann at New York Magazine:
The evidence that President Trump is exactly the same as candidate Trump just keeps piling up. After having his press secretary falsely insist that his inauguration crowd was bigger than Obama’s, now Trump himself is repeating a lie about why he lost the popular vote – and displaying his knack for dragging out an unflattering story into multiple news cycles. [...]
During his confirmation hearing Senator Jeff Sessions admitted that he and Trump never discussed the millions of alleged illegal votes, though as attorney general it would fall on Session to prosecute, and protect the integrity of U.S. elections. If Trump really thinks he was robbed of a popular vote win, why isn’t his administration looking for evidence to prove it, and trying to stop it?
Greg Sargeant:
Anyone who is not considering the possibility that this may be an outgrowth of Trump’s well-established authoritarian streak is missing what may be happening here. As libertarian writer Jacob Levy has written, Trump may be experimenting with a time-tested tactic, in which a leader “with authoritarian tendencies” will regularly lie in order to get others to internalize his lies, as “a way to demonstrate and strengthen his power over them.” It is hard to say how deep Trump’s authoritarianism runs and how it will impact his presidency. But this is something worth being prepared for. What’s more, all of this cannot be disentangled from Trump’s unprecedented conflicts of interest and lack of transparency about them. The press is going to dig up all manner of conflicts and potentially corruption, and the White House’s gaslighting now lays the groundwork to discredit any such efforts later.
David A. Andelman at USA Today:
“I have a running war with the media,” the new president said. “They are among the most dishonest human beings on earth.”
Trump, the consummate marketer, understands that if you repeat a lie long enough, eventually people — even those far outside his inner circle or most fervent supporters — will believe it. The concept began even before Hitler’s propaganda chief Joseph Goebbels embraced it as a core tenet of the Third Reich: “If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it...” [...]
Already one of the themes of the Trump presidency is that all journalists are liars, the press is unrelievedly corrupt, and the media is in no sense to be trusted as a check on the power of the presidency. When that sinks deeply into the American psyche, it could persist far beyond even his four-year term and will be far more difficult to eradicate.
Tyler Cowen at Bloomberg:
Trump specializes in lower-status lies, typically more of the bald-faced sort, namely stating “x” when obviously “not x” is the case. They are proclamations of power, and signals that the opinions of mainstream media and political opponents will be disregarded. The lie needs to be understood as more than just the lie. For one thing, a lot of Americans, especially many Trump supporters, are more comfortable with that style than with the “fancier” lies they believe they are hearing from the establishment. For another, joining the Trump coalition has been made costlier for marginal outsiders and ignoring the Trump coalition is now less likely for committed opponents. In other words, the Trump administration is itself sending loyalty signals to its supporters by burning its bridges with other groups.
Eric Zorn at The Chicago Tribune:
Why did Trump obsess about the size of the crowd on the National Mall — earlier Jan. 21, he told an audience at the CIA headquarters that it was 1.5 million, which is about three times the size of most estimates — so much that he directed Spicer to confront the media about it?
"Overall frustration" with "demoralizing" coverage that serves to minimize Trump's popularity, Spicer explained.
Sorry, but doubling down on petty lies isn't going to bring up those sagging approval ratings. Giving the public the impression that you're willing to mislead them on small things erodes your ability to gain their confidence when you want them to believe you on big things, things that really matter.
Pat Garofalo at US News:
Clearly, the administration sees currency in waging what Trump called on Saturday his "running war" with the media. By undermining the legitimacy of the press, perhaps Trump thinks he can then get away with saying whatever, whenever, however at odds it is with the facts over the next four years. By offering any corrective at all, the media will just be firing a salvo in the "war," not playing its key role in American democracy.
But this has also been Trump's con from the beginning: He portrays himself as a truth-telling populist when he is actually a habitual liar who made increasing mortgage costs for middle-class Americans one of his first acts in office. He seems to have no shame, and so lies about matters big and small when it will work to either his political advantage or just to soothe his ego. Every bit of lashing out is fresh meat for his base, which his team reportedly thinks will believe him no matter what – he's happy to create an alternative reality in which his supporters can live unaccosted by unpleasant truths. A safe space, if you will.
We're now witnessing how Trump's con morphs into one of governing rather than campaigning: Delegitimizing truth, focusing attention away from the actual machinations of government and covering it all with a veneer of reality TV spectacle.
Alexey Kovalev, who has reported on Putin, gives advice to the American press corps:
But in order to hold Putin – or Trump – accountable, you don’t need access to the Kremlin or the White House. Quite the opposite – having such access is a liability, because it’s a privilege you can be threatened with losing, or you can succumb to access bias. Investigations into corruption and mismanagement don’t require close relationships with state officials – quite the opposite. And even though Russian independent reporters can’t unseat Putin (nothing can, that’s not how elections work in Russia) defining public policy is one advantage their American colleagues have. So my message for covering President Trump’s administration is this: don’t get distracted by what they say, focus on what they don’t.
Turning to policy, Jay Michaelson at The Daily Beast looks at Trump’s Supreme Court shortlist:
[I]f there’s an endgame here, other than the nuclear option of eliminating the filibuster altogether, it will have to involve a consensus pick, someone in the mode of Anthony Kennedy or David Souter—a moderate Republican whose position on abortion (in many people’s minds, the only issue the Supreme Court faces) is unknown, but whose track record is reliably conservative without being extreme.
None of the five current candidates fit that bill.
Writing in The Washington Post, Max Stier explains why Trump’s federal hiring freeze is bad policy:
It makes no sense to freeze a problem in place rather than fix it. Although the president’s order to downsize the federal workforce through attrition has some exceptions, it is unclear exactly how it will be interpreted and applied. The order will not improve government performance, but could bar the door to hiring employees who are needed to prevent cyberattacks on federal computer systems, ensure the safety of our food supply and air quality, and provide important services to small businesses, farmers, seniors, veterans and students.
The New York Times editorial board takes on Trump’s “big money establishment”:
Mr. Trump may be out to challenge one establishment — the liberal elite — but he is installing one of his own, filled with tycoons, Wall Street heavyweights, cronies and a new rank of shadowy wealthy “advisers” unaccountable to anyone but him. His gilded cabinet, still being confirmed, presents a jarring contrast with his message. [...] Standing in the rain during Mr. Trump’s inaugural speech, farmers and factory workers, truckers, nurses and housekeepers greeted his anti-establishment words by cheering “Drain the Swamp!” even as the new president was standing knee-deep in a swamp of his own.
And we close our roundup with Eugene Robinson’s analysis of the new resistance:
I covered some of those early tea party rallies, and I saw similar levels of energy and engagement — and, yes, anger — at the Women’s March. The millions who participated nationwide now constitute the kind of broad-based network that can be harnessed into effective political action. The Trump administration can haughtily dismiss the dissenters by saying, as the Obama administration once did, that elections have consequences. But the next election is right around the corner.
If progressives are going to re-create the tea party’s success, Saturday’s multitudes will have to begin organizing at the local level. They will have to field candidates not just for Congress but for governorships and state legislatures, too. They will have to develop policy positions that go beyond “stop Trump” — and that also go beyond traditional Democratic Party dogma.
The administration will argue that, after a bitterly divisive campaign, it is time for the nation to come together behind the new president. No, it is not. We are in the midst of a political realignment that is nowhere near complete, and it is more important than ever that progressive voices make themselves heard.