For Martin Baron, April 5, 2018, is the day the euphemisms died.
No more “untruths.” No more “misstatements of fact.” No more “bending the truth.” The Washington Post, of which Baron was editor, would now call Donald Trump’s lies what they were. Lies.
In his book “Collision of Power,” Baron writes that the paper’s prior policy, broadly shared in the news industry at the time, was to eschew the word “lie” for what Trump was saying.
For Baron and the Post, the change came when Trump, astride the aisle on Air Force One when asked if he knew about payments to porn star Stormy Daniels, he said, “No, I don’t.” This, though a $130,000 check bore his signature.
That was it, the limit, writes Baron.
He quotes Post fact-checker Glen Kessler’s statement about a matter for which Trump now stands trial: “indisputable evidence that Trump and his allies had been dishonest at every turn.”
Baron’s book focuses on the Post’s clashes with Trump in the then-president’s efforts to blot out the truth and paint a truth-seeking press as the “enemy of the people.”
Knowing how Trump operated, and to prep for the man’s “brand of presidency,” Baron writes that he read classic portraits about authoritarians, real and fictitious, such as Sinclair Lewis’ “It Can’t Happen Here” and Phillip Roth’s “The Plot Against America.”
The latter, published 12 years before Trump’s ascendance, features a tribute that couldn’t depict Trump better: “To have captured the mind of the world’s greatest nation without uttering a single word of truth!”
Baron also quotes historian Timothy Snyder: “Post-truth is pre-fascism.”
The question for Trump voters: What is your threshold? Is there any limit to the lies you will swallow and consecrate with adoration?
Every lie Trump utters is followed by another lie. This is why his attorneys quake at the very thought of him under oath.
The standard response by his followers is that all politicians lie, and that’s a reasonable claim. But Trump’s lies are the stuff of history books and indictments.
Jimmy Kimmel has it right to quip that as Trump believes he could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue without political penalty, why lie about affairs with porn stars? Why lie about fake electors and tampered voting machines? Why lie about pilfered classified documents? Why lie about business deals in Russia?
Why lie at all? Just say, “I did it. That’s me.” Save on mountainous legal bills, coast to the election. If you get convicted, pardon yourself.
As said, every Trump lie is followed by another.
He told his minions Mike Pence had the power to power single-handedly to overturn the 2020 election. After Pence told him he wouldn’t and couldn’t abet a coup, Trump issued a statement that Pence had agreed he had that very power.
When Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelensky told him there was no corruption probe into Joe Biden, with millions in arms assistance on the line, Trump asked for a statement, just a statement, to raise suspicion.
When the Georgia secretary of state refused to “find, uh, 11,780 votes” and affirm Trump’s lies of widespread voter fraud, the defeated soon-to-be ex-president threatened that his refusal was a crime. No, the crime was all Trump’s.
The sick irony was that Trump managed to convince his followers that it was the established media that was peddling “fake news.”
This would include the Post’s exhausted fact-checking team which found that across four years of his presidency, Trump issued 30,473 “false or misleading” statements.
Also known as lies.
As his deceitful acts are revealed in court for all to see, surely American voters will have reached their limit.
“But something touched me deep inside
the day the euphemisms died.”
Longtime newspaperman John Young lives in Colorado. Email him at jyoungcolumn@gmail.com.
The opinions expressed in this editorial are those of the author.
