When I was younger, I remember the first time that I had heard of the term, white lie. Inherently, telling white lies is not a bad thing. For example, we lie to people when we say that we’re not throwing them a surprise birthday party when we actually are or when their outfit doesn’t look good, but we say it does anyway because they like it. White lies always confused me, because as everyone knows there is a fine line between telling a white lie in someone’s best interest and telling a straight-up lie in order to save your own skin. However, there are a few places in the world where all lies are unacceptable; one of them being The White House.
We are currently less than a month in on Donald Trump’s presidency, and so far the lies told by him and his administration outweigh the truths. Expectantly, Trump himself has been a hard hitter in his administration’s lies via the micro-blogging social network Twitter and other public statements. What’s interesting about Trump’s lying is that it ranges from petty issues like the size of his inauguration crowd to more concerning matters like the 3 million undocumented immigrants he alleges voted illegally.
President Trump is not the only member of his administration that pushes these lies to the American public. His former campaign manager, now Counselor to the President Kellyanne Conway unabashedly pushes the false statements that he makes. She has even gone as far as to make up events that never happened in order to defend Trump’s hasty executive actions. Furthermore. Politics have a reputation for stretching the truth, but what Trump and his administration are doing is unprecedented.
What Trump and his administration are presenting is a war on the press and factual information. By disseminating false information and attacking the credibility of cold hard facts, Trump is taking power away from the press. While the press is busy unnecessarily disputing factual information with pundits and the public, information that President Trump and his administration hold to themselves is no longer under scrutiny. Instead of questioning internal white house operations like the role of Trump’s controversial advisor, Steve Bannon, Trump’s business interests in muslim nations he did not include in the travel ban, and his plans to have American taxpayers fund what will be an impractical border wall, we’re stuck focusing on inauguration attendance numbers and non-existent voter fraud.
The notion that the Trump administration is lying is not the most disconcerting issue in itself. What’s unnerving about the dishonesty is that lying to the American public about facts that are concrete sets a precedent; a precedent for what the current administration plans to do with information that isn’t necessarily so concrete. Quantitative data can be verified and statements concerning the public can be independently verified as truth or fallacy, but information that remains within the White House is not up for verification. There is no independent party to separate the facts from the fiction. If we’re going to put this information in the hands of a handful of people in The White House, it should be people who tell the truth; that quality does not reside within President Trump’s administration.
