Trump and the truth

I don’t blame President Trump for calling his 100th day in office a “ridiculous” marker created by the “fake news” media. He knows it gives them an excuse to tote up his multitudinous falsehoods, flip-flops and failures.

The Washington Post, for example, sicced its fact-checking team on Trump to find out how many times he’d made false or misleading claims during those 100 days. The total came to 488, or an average of 4.9 claims a day. On four days he lodged 20 or more false claims.

In fairness, I should note that on 10 days he made no false claims. Then again, he was playing golf on six of them.

This unprecedented spewing of untruths culminated on Saturday, the 100th day. Interviewed by Face the Nation host John Dickerson, the president was asked whether he stood by his debunked charge that President Obama wiretapped Trump Tower during the 2016 election.

“I don’t stand by anything,” Trump responded. “I just—you can take it any way you want. … I have my own opinions. You can have your own opinions.”

In Trump’s world, apparently, facts and opinions have equal weight.

Then, two days later, while being interviewed by the Washington Examiner’s Salena Zito, the president made the bizarre comment that “people don’t ask … why there was the Civil War. … Why could that one not have been worked out?”

People don’t ask why there was a Civil War? You could fill a library with all the books written about it. And why couldn’t it be worked out? In a word: slavery.

Let’s face it: Our president is a mendacious ignoramus who makes up his own reality.