War on the media is all Trump and conservatives have left - since they can't get anything done

FRIDAY, JUN 30, 2017 05:00 AM EDT

War on the media is all Trump and conservatives have left — since they can’t get anything done

Conservatives have totally lost the ability to govern, so they attack the press to distract the public

MATTHEW SHEFFIELD

It is no coincidence that President Donald Trump, a man who tells lies with a frequency and ease unprecedented in modern American history, has made attacking the journalists who cover him an essential component of his public relations strategy.

“Every president has shaded the truth or told occasional whoppers,” New York Times columnist David Leonhard wrote in his June 23 catalog of the president’s multitude of falsehoods. But “no other president — of either party — has behaved as Trump is behaving. He is trying to create an atmosphere in which reality is irrelevant.”

Trump’s love of deception has been in evidence throughout his many decades as a public figure, starting from his days as a low-rent New York real estate developer. He even admitted how much he loves lying in his ghostwritten autobiography (which he falsely claims is the best-selling business book of all time).

“I call it truthful hyperbole. It’s an innocent form of exaggeration — and a very effective form of promotion,” reads one of the most salient passages in “The Art of the Deal.”

Thirty years after writing it, Trump’s ghostwriter, Tony Schwartz, disavowed and explained the passage to New Yorker writer Jane Mayer:

“He lied strategically. He had a complete lack of conscience about it,” Schwartz said. Trump’s constant reliance on untruths “gave him a strange advantage.”

more
http://www.salon.com/2017/06/30/attacking-the-media-is-the-only-thing-conservatives-have-left/