Bounces off me and sticks on you!

Ah … Those idyllic times on the playground in the fourth grade. None of those playground taunts mattered much. But as the years piled on, they became more and more important. They started to take on real consequences.

A new era of in-your-face lies started with Johnson’s lie to America and Congress in the Tonkin Gulf incident. Later, his lie turned into defeat in Vietnam. Johnson seemed to shrink in office and didn’t even try to get re-elected.  Nixon raised lies to a new level with the Watergate affair. Back then, America still had a sense of shame about it and Nixon paid the price as he was forced to resign. But starting with Reagan, lies started to work rather than fail. Reagan and his team conspired against America with a traitorous deal with Iran that won him the presidency over Carter. (Carter was one of the very few truly moral politicians I can think of.) Reagan followed it up with Iran-Contra and the trend continued when Clinton lied about having sex in the White House. I’ve always admired Nixon’s ability to lie with such a straight face. When he was caught in an egregious lie, he would say that he just “misspoke himself”.

Lying just doesn’t seem to have the sting that it used to have.

I’m watching the Hush Money trial of Trump on CNN. The prosecution has just turned Michael Cohen over to Trump’s lawyers for dissection. To CNN’s credit, they included a lawyer who appears to be auditioning for membership in the Trump gang in their discussion. Including different points of view helps to keep the discussion honest! The Trump gang lawyer just made this claim:

“Cohen is the biggest liar I have ever seen. If there was an Olympic event for liars, Cohen would be on top and would win the gold medal for lies.”

(Not being a court reporter, the quote above is just the best I can do to remember it.)

Perhaps the Trump-gang lawyer didn’t actually lie. Perhaps he just “misspoke himself”.