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Please, Mr. President, stop lying

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On Tuesday, Donald Trump made the kind of decision that defines presidencies. He dismissed James Comey, the FBI director who was leading the investigation of the Russian intervention into the presidential election — and whether Trump associates colluded in the effort. One of the most striking aspects of the letter the president sent to Comey goes to the lies, or at least the requests that readers accept the wholly improbable.

At this grave moment, the president couldn’t resist his penchant for trading in whoppers.

The president claimed to act on the recommendation of his attorney general and deputy attorney general, something quickly amplified by White House aides. Yet just days later, the president admitted he made up his mind about the firing before the recommendation arrived. He didn’t act out of dismay for the way Comey violated Justice Department policies in handling the matter of Hillary Clinton’s email as secretary of state. Or that Comey lost the confidence of the bureau work force. As he acknowledged, the president had in mind bringing an end to the Russian investigation.

Better the truth surfacing eventually?

The trouble is, this is part of a harmful pattern. The president’s letter also made the hard-to-believe claim that Comey told him three times he wasn’t under investigation.

Reports indicate Comey has a different version. To which the president waved the threat of having “taped” the conversations.

As it is, politicians dodge the truth, as virtually everyone does, to one degree or another. What distinguishes the president is the brazenness, the breadth and multitude of his lies. They are big. PolitiFact has reported that fewer than one in five of his statements are “true” or “mainly true.” Sometimes the falsehoods are amusing, such as his claim last week that he authored the phrase “priming the pump.”

Mostly, the cascade risks damage to the quality of the debate and the work of governing, no small factor when the public must be informed. How else to view the outrageous lie about Barack Obama wiretapping his phones? Or the contention that 3 million voted illegally for Clinton last fall and now a commission forming to study the hollow allegation?

Even when corrected, he pays little heed, continuing to insist, for instance, that the United States is “the highest taxed country in the world.” (It is 32rd among 35 peer nations, according to the OECD.) He claims that immigration authorities are focusing on the deportation of violent criminals when arrests of illegal immigrants who are otherwise law-abiding have increased by nearly one-third.

The president launched his political career on shameless lies about Barack Obama’s birth. He still won’t face the truth about the size of his inaugural crowd. The hope long has been that the president would rise even somewhat to the occasion, proving less the boy and more the statesman, that he would accept the obligation to prepare and become informed.

Unfortunately, the candidate so plainly unfit and ill-equipped for the office has advanced hardly at all. It is embarrassing when the New York Times reports that German officials found the president in the dark about the proposed American-European trade deal and almost clueless about Russian aggression in Ukraine. What would be helpful now is for him to stop lying, grasping some dignity from the truth.


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