When Donald Trump is sworn in as the nation’s 47th president, the Republican takeover of federal government will be complete. The Republican majorities in the House and Senate are small, but they are enough to back up whatever high crimes and misdemeanors the once and future Liar in Chief might commit.
Trump is perhaps the most prolific liar in American history. The Washington Post Fact Checker tallied 30,573 lies told by Trump in his first term as president, and his biggest lie was the unfounded claim that Democrats stole the 2020 election, which inspired riots at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, in a last-ditch attempt to stop the certification of the vote, but Joe Biden replaced Trump in the White House.
During the interregnum, Trump maintained control of the Republican Party and insisted that Republicans adopt the Big Lie that Trump was still the rightful president.
During the past election year, Glen Kessler, the Post’s chief Fact Checker, noted, “Trump once again resorted to false claims and sometimes outrageous lies, especially on immigration and the economy. He rode a wave of discontent about inflation — a problem in every industrialized country after the pandemic — to falsely claim that the economy was a disaster, despite relatively low unemployment, falling inflation and strong growth.”
In 2024, Kessler noted, the Post’s most-read fact check was Trump’s false claim in October 2024 about Hurricane Helene relief efforts, claiming there was no money for North Carolina because Joe Biden spent FEMA funds on migrants. “What’s even richer is that when Trump was president, he did exactly what he claimed Biden did — funding migrant programs with FEMA disaster aid,” Kessler noted.
Two weeks before Trump was to be inaugurated again (and perhaps to distract attention from his scheduled sentencing two days later for 34 felonies in New York), Trump recklessly blamed California Gov. Gavin Newsom for wildfires that were rapidly spreading across the hills surrounding Los Angeles.
In a Jan. 8 post on “Truth Social,” Trump said, “Governor Gavin Newscum [sic] refused to sign the water restoration declaration put before him that would have allowed millions of gallons of water, from excess rain and snow melt from the North, to flow daily into many parts of California, including the areas that are currently burning in a virtually apocalyptic way. He wanted to protect an essentially worthless fish called a smelt, by giving it less water (it didn’t work!), but didn’t care about the people of California. Now the ultimate price is being paid. I will demand that this incompetent governor allow beautiful, clean, fresh water to FLOW INTO CALIFORNIA! He is the blame for this. On top of it all, no water for fire hydrants, not firefighting planes. A true disaster!”
By that time, three raging fires had consumed more than 5,000 acres, with no containment, and the flames were spreading at unprecedented levels, driven by winds of up to 100 mph, which kept the state from using firefighting airplanes to stop the advance.
Newsom noted there was no “water restoration declaration” at issue and state reservoirs were filled, but the demand on fire hydrants by hundreds of firefighters reduced water pressure to the point that they were ineffective against wildfires as hurricane-force winds blew the flames and cinders into new neighborhoods.
Reckless statements such as Trump’s attempt to politicize a wildfire catastrophe in California because it is governed by Democrats, as well as his musing that the US should take control of Greenland from Denmark (a NATO ally) and the Panama Canal from the Republic of Panama by force, if necessary, as well as his proposal to annex Canada as the 51st of the United States, should undermine any belief that Trump is fit for the presidency. But his political appointees embrace his craziness, starting with the Big Lie that he won the 2020 election, and they must pledge their loyalty to him over the Constitution. Republican senators are expected to vote to confirm his dubious nominees for Cabinet positions, and they are threatened with being primaried if they resist.
Among other “big lies” Republicans must embrace to advance in the party (many of which were noted in a Jan. 8 column by Thom Hartmann at HartmannReport.com) are:
• Climate change is not responsible for the increased ferocity of wildfires, hurricanes, windstorms or other extreme weather events;
• Giving tax cuts to billionaires and corporations helps average working people;
• Joe Biden opened the southern border for four years and Democrats encouraged illegal immigrants to vote;
• Social Security is going broke and can only be fixed by cutting benefits or privatization.
• A national healthcare system, such as Medicare For All, won’t work in America, even though it works in every other advanced democracy in the world.
• Free or inexpensive college doesn’t benefit the nation, but student debt builds “individual responsibility.”
• Gun control laws lead to higher crime rates.
• Public schools are indoctrinating children with Marxist and homosexual ideologies and Critical Race Theory is being taught in elementary schools to make White children feel guilty.
Trump added “convicted felon” to his resumé on Jan. 10, as New York Judge Juan Merchan sentenced him to “unconditional discharge” for 34 felony counts of falsifying business records to cover up a hush money payment Trump’s attorney, Michael Cohen, made to porn star Stormy Daniels to keep her quiet during the 2016 campaign. Trump was found guilty by a New York state court jury in May 2024 after Daniels testified about the one-night sexual encounter in 2006, while Melania Trump was nursing their infant son, Barron.
Trump, whose business reimbursed Cohen for the payment, insisted he did nothing wrong and refused to take responsibility for his actions, a position endorsed by many Republican misleaders, including House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.), who issued a statement after Trump’s sentencing, calling the trial a “weaponization of government” and expressing support for the president-elect’s decision to appeal the hush money conviction.
The case, Johnson asserted, “was never about the facts, and it should have never been brought in the first place.” Covering up serial adultery to win the election apparently wasn’t a problem for Johnson or other professed evangelical Christians.
“The judge grossly perverted the American legal system by manipulating existing law in a purely partisan effort to convert a bogus misdemeanor charge into a felony,” Johnson said.
Don’t enable the Big Liars. Don’t surrender your constitutional rights. Don’t believe anything you read on social media without checking it out. Support the Democratic resistance in Congress. And hold on until 2026. — JMC
From The Progressive Populist, February 1, 2025
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