Tony Schwartz, who co-wrote the book The Art of the Deal with Donald Trump before he became president, suggested today on MSNBC that news organizations begin counting how many times President Trump tells the truth instead of keeping track of all his lies, according to Mediaite.
“He can’t tell the truth,” Schwartz said on The Beat with Ari Melber. “He’s almost literally at this point incapable of telling the truth. What happens with Trump is that anything that arises in any way alters his self-image, he will reactively come up with something from thin air. And now we have 13,000 lies, but I’d like to know how many truths we have. How many times has he told the truth during the last three years?”
“You think we should start counting that?” Melber asked.
“I do!” Schwartz replied. “Because it’s an easier count. You could do it on one or two hands. And they were accidental.”
Trump’s perceived propensity for not telling the truth came after he told reporters he did not know Ambassador Gordon Sondland that well. Sondland has become a major player in the ongoing impeachment inquiry after he revised one of his previous statements in which he claimed he knew nothing about the Trump administration asking Ukraine to investigate Hunter Biden, the son of former Vice President Joe Biden, one of the president’s political rivals.
When Sondland’s testimony agreed with the Trump administration, the president tweeted that Sondland was “a really good man and a great American.” But after Sondland changed his story, Trump told a group of reporters, “I hardly know the gentleman.”
Newscaster Mark Thompson was also a member of the panel on The Beat November 8. Thompson said that Trump acted in an immature fashion.
“He’s like the child that his parents dropped off at military school,” Thompson continued. “It’s like he never grew up out of that. So, he has to attack people personally. That’s why he’s so fascinated with getting names and if he can’t attack you personally, he says he doesn’t even know who you are. To me, that’s just an immature way of functioning.”
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“One of the worst things a human being can be is non-self-aware,” Thompson continued. “And this is probably one of the most non-self-aware individuals in human history.”
“He can’t tell the truth. He’s almost literally at this point incapable of telling the truth. What happens with Trump is that anything that arises in any way alters his self-image, he will reactively come up with something from thin air. And now we have 13,000 lies, but I’d like to know how many truths we have. How many times has he told the truth during the last three years?”
Trump allegedly lies so often that news organizations have been keeping track of them. As of October 9, 2019, President Trump had allegedly told 13,435 lies or claims that were misleading. That works out to an average of 13.4 lies per day, according to MSNBC.
Data from The Washington Post indicated that Trump told the most lies about the construction of the border wall. That was followed by lies about the strength of the U.S. economy and the size of the U.S. trade deficit.