And, of course, the former Liar in Chief of the country, who lied over 30,000 times in public just in four years as president, managed to "lie through omission" during his testimony in New York yesterday.
Below are the leads to three stories found on today's Washington Post front page:
Below are the leads to three stories found on today's Washington Post front page:
NEW YORK — Donald Trump spent hours in a deposition Wednesday with the New York attorney general and repeatedly invoked his Fifth Amendment right not to answer questions, the latest in a series of ominous legal developments that would have once been considered devastating for a former president considering another run for the White House.
Trump emerged from the question-and-non-answer session with praise for the “very professional” way Attorney General Letitia James’s team handled the meeting, in which he refused more than 400 times to answer questions about his businesses, property valuations and loans, according to a person with knowledge of the discussion. This person, speaking on the condition of anonymity to describe the closed session, said Trump stated his name, formally declared his Fifth Amendment right not to incriminate himself, and from the on replied to many questions with two words: “Same answer.”
Even MSNBC pundits agreed that "taking the Fifth" was Trump's smartest strategy, since any of his answers would likely have caught him committing perjury. His cult, of course, is outraged and sputtering with rage and threatening everything from firing Justice Department officials to civil war.
The next story is a minor one, but a classic example of how humans are predisposed to believe one another, which makes lying to get ahead such a popular pastime.
As authorities tell it, convicted burglar Bryan Betancur made what seemed to be a reasonable request to Maryland probation officials a few days before the insurrection at the U.S. Capitol. Prohibited from leaving the state without permission, he asked to travel to the District on Jan. 6, 2021, so that he could hand out Bibles on behalf of the Christian group The Gideons International.
Maryland’s division of parole and probation said okay.
“Betancur provided [his] probation officer with updates throughout the day and communicated that he would not be home by the normal curfew time,” a federal prosecutor said in a court filing.
In a recent plea deal, Betancur acknowledged that his story about distributing the Good Book was a ruse.
The fact that this insurrectionist used the Bible as his cover is so on-brand for White Christian Nationalists that I found myself simply thinking, "of course."
The third example today comes from North Korea, a fifth world country, so to speak, whose leaders are as brazen as Trump, but without any press or law enforcement to put up even token resistance to the torrent of lies.
SEOUL — North Korea, which has one of the poorest health-care infrastructures in the world, now claims it has done what few other countries have accomplished: eradicate the coronavirus.
For days, state propaganda outlets reported zero cases of “fever,” which North Korea, with its limited testing capacity, apparently uses as a euphemism for potential covid-19. On Wednesday, leader Kim Jong Un gave a speech in which he “solemnly declared a victory” over the virus, state media said Thursday.
But there are plenty of holes in North Korea’s miraculous comeback story. For one, it lacks the capacity to do widespread PCR testing. North Korea and Eritrea are the only two countries without a coronavirus vaccine program. And North Korea’s hospitals are also so poorly equipped that there is barely reliable electricity.
Today was a great reminder that one of the media's most vital jobs is to take on the lies and communicate the truth, if either of those can be supported with evidence.
Unfortunately, many people prefer the lies to the truth.
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