April 5, 2018

The discussion on Morning Joe this morning what not only that Donald Trump is a liar, but he is now surrounding himself with liars.

I found what John Meacham said to be true, but not comforting:

JOHN MEACHAM: Do you remember the -- I guess maybe the day after the inauguration when the new president went out to the George H.W. Bush Intelligence Center? (Joe Scarborough: Good lord.)

You know the quotation on the wall out there which is in the Gospel of John: "You shall know the truth, and the truth shall set you free." You know, not to be overly grand at this hour of the day, but there's an enormous amount of salience to that. Presidents historically get in trouble when they think they can put one past the broad populous. If you -- President Trump, Johnson in Vietnam. President Nixon in nearly everything. And there was a great test proposed during World War II by Churchill about how the British people or the American people could react to a crisis, could undertake great public sacrifice, but they only did it if they were told the truth and he proposed a two-prong test. He said that the British people can face any misfortune with buoyancy as long as they're convinced that those in charge of their affairs are not deceiving them, which is to say lying to the public, or themselves dwelling in a fool's paradise. Put another way, they're out of touch with reality themselves. It seems to me right now the president probably fails both tests. This may take another couple of years. It took us four years of Joe McCarthy. It took six and more years with Vietnam, but the truth ultimate ultimately will out here and I think honestly that both the president and those who lie and misrepresent and enable him on his behalf are on the wrong side of history here.

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