In cased you missed it, in just the last 24 hours, Donald Trump has:
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Told reporters that his father, Fred Trump, was born in Germany, which is not true. Fred Trump was born in New York.
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Suggested that the noise from wind farms could cause cancer.
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Repeated his claim that the Barr memo clears him of obstruction of justice, which is specifically and pointedly does not.
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Claimed that he never called for the full release of the Mueller report, which he did so with great specificity less than a week ago.
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Stated that is was a “great honor” to fund Great Lakes Restoration Initiative. In fact, Obama fully funded the program and Trump’s budget proposes a 90 percent cut.
Oddly, most of these irrefutable lies will go unchallenged because Trump and his administration no longer hold themselves accountable to the American people, and Republican lawmakers allow these ridiculous and oftentimes damaging lies to be spoken without challenge because they are gutless cowards who are only concerned with their reelection.
Two strategies that Trump has employed to avoid accountability include:
#1: Trump is afraid to conduct a press conference. He has conducted exactly two press conferences since taking office and both were disastrous because he cannot stop lying, makes racist and sexist claims, and is utterly inarticulate.
Instead, he only takes questions in situations when multiple unamplified reporters are allowed to briefly shout questions at him, usually over the roar of a helicopter, and he is free to ignore any of the questions being asked.
Compare Trump’s two press conferences with the number of press conferences by previous administrations:
Obama: 65
Bush: 59
Clinton: 69
Bush: 89
Reagan: 15
Carter: 52
This is a President who habitually lies and refuses to allow the American people to hold him accountable.
#2: Sarah Sanders has almost abandoned the decades-old policy of daily White House briefings. Rather than taking regular questions from the press, Trump and Sanders almost only appear on Fox News.
This allows Trump to lie about his father’s birthplace and suggest that the sound from windmills cause cancer without concern that the press many ask him pointed questions on the matter.
They can’t.
