Stars dorondo dale, and in the face of all that lying the president took it to a new level this week. Just remember what youre seeing and what youre reading is not whats happening. Well, this is a president who doesnt hesitate to tell you that whatiosee with your own eyes and hear with your own ears is not the truth. The sheer number of lies can be overwhelming, and the danger is well become numb to all of this, that well tell ourselves its just trump being trump. But theres a larger question here. Can the truth survive President Trump . As a new York Real Estate developer he built his business on his own blatant lies claiming trump tower has 68 floors when the truth is easy to see, it has 58. When according to a forbes
reporter his real worth was closer to 5 billion and this is man who built his campaign on lies starting with racist birther lie starting with president barack obama was not born in this country, a lie he still reportedly clings to in private. He wasnt born in this country which is a real possibility. Claiming he saw muslims celebrating on roofs in new jersey on 9 11. Never happened. Claiming he opposed the iraq war from the beginning when the fact is his first critical comments came 18 months into the war. Suggesting ted cruzs father was somehow involved in the Jfk Assassination which is just beyond belief. And now as President Donald Trump is lying more and more and doubling down on his strategy of trying to discredit anyone who questions his lies. Well, what are these lies doing
to our democracy . To our standing in the world . Facts still matters, right . The truth still matters. So are you going to believe the man who tells you to ignore the facts, ignore the truth or are you going to believe what you see with your own eyes or hear with your own ears . Good question. Lets bring in now david chalian. President trumps lies are coming fast and furious. As ive just said before, hes made 54 false claims last week and says that in the last six weeks the last ten weeks his most dishonest weeks as president. Thats according to dorondo dale. Why is this getting worse . Two things. One i think the president is under increasing pressure from the Michael Cohen thing, but the real reason why you see an up
tick in this and no desire from the president to step away from this behavior is because he doesnt suffer huge repercussions for it in terms of his base of support, in terms of the people who work for him and are interacting with him every day. In terms of his partys members of congress who hes dealing with. Theres no flood away from him that this is unacceptable in some way from his circle of influencers. And that to me gives him permission to continue to do this. President trump, hes been astonishingly effective, david, in getting his followers to believe him even in the face of bold faced lie. Is there any sense that things are changing and as this becomes more frequent and even boulder as he does that . I dont see any evidence of that change, of what youre saying about his supporters starting not to believe what hes saying. I dont see any evidence of
A recap of the days news. And no, neither i or anyone else has ever seen anything like this. Truth is the currency of democracy. Without truth you dont have government, an informed electorate, you dont have a democracy. You dont have a Constitutional Republic based on the principle of democracy. You just cant do it. Thats central. Now, donald trump has been very effective with a certain segment of the population. Surprising to me and a large segment of the population, roughly something of a third, running up to maybe 40 . I would say about the previous interview you did with david, that there are some signs that some of his base, women in the suburbs but according to polls are beginning to say weve had enough. Just a footnote. Look, whats happening now is donald trump is authoritarian. He wants people to believe that the only truth, the one and only
A recap of the days news. Era in which theres no such thing as objective facts. He has all the facts, he has all the information, just listen to him. Thats what hes preaching and thats his presidency. I also agree theres no desperation. I do think that the appearance of closing the Mueller Investigation, some of whats happening with some of his former counsel, mr. Cohen, i think thig is beginning to tell on him some. As he gets more desperate he takes bigger risks in telling bigger lies or more often telling lies, and telling people, look, dont believe what you read or see anywhere else, just come to me. I have the ultimate truth, i am the way. So i asked david do his supporters not believe him or do they just not care. You say most americans see through the propaganda. I hope youre right. Why do you say that . Appreciate your time. When we come back Donald Trumps tangled relationship with the truth goes way back. How he built his real estate empire on a foundation of lies and how he got away with it for so many years. When you bundle your auto and Home Insurance with esurance, you could save with their single deductible. So if you confused the brake with the gas, or if your lamp post jumped out of nowhere, or if you forgot your bike was on the roof rack, you only pay one deductible instead of two for a claim involving both your auto and home. And when you save that much, its almost like it. Never even happened. Thats auto and Home Insurance for the modern world. Esurance. An allstate company. Click or call. At t provides edgetoedge intelligence, covering virtually every part of your business. So this wont happen. Because youve made sure this sensor and this machine are integrated. Atta, boy. Yes, some people assign genders to machines. With edgetoedge intelligence, youll know your customers love this color, dont love this one. Never getting grape again. You can adjust in near real time. If someone tries to breach your firewall in london you start to panic. Dont. Youve got allies on the outside, Security Algorithms on the inside. If its jammed up here, its hot in here. You know both those things, you can do this. Your flowers wont wilt. At t provides edge to edge intelligence. It can do so much for your business, the list goes on and on. Thats the power of. When her patients Blood Pressure drops, she can share the information with. The coauthor of the art of the deal are both here to talk about that. But first gloria takes a long look at trumps history of lies. Reporter from the election itself. In many places like california, the same person votes many times. You probably heard about that. They like to say, oh, thats a conspiracy theory. Not a conspiracy, folks. Millions and millions of people. Reporter to the inauguration. We had a massive field of people, it went all the way back to the washington monument. Reporter to statements like this. What youre seeing and what youre reading is not whats happening. Reporter donald trump has had a fraught relationship with the truth. One that goes back decades. To the building and selling of trump tower where barbara res managed the construction. He planted that i was looking for an apartment in trump tower. And that didnt happen . No. But it made the papers. Sure. So Voracity Wasnt A part of it. It was just getting the buzz out there about trump . Yes. Did you guys laugh at it or there was nothing so terrible about it. It was kind of like puffing. You know it was like exaggerating. Tony schwartz, coauthor of trumps art of the deal has a name for this. I call it an innocent form of exaggeration. Now i can call something that i actually sold for 2 million, i can say 10 million and that becomes truthful hyperbole. The truth is the truth, hyperbole is a lie. They dont go together. Reporter and they didnt go together of trumps taj mahal cuseen eo in 1990 when some of
the flauocks didnt work. When they went down, many things hadnt been done. They shutdown a third of the slots. Reporter slots that were critical to the casinos success. To shutdown a third on opening day was both humiliating and financially disastrous, and it was only done because he doesnt have, you know, an organization indepth. Reporter but that Wasnt The Story Trump told. Something could go bad like the opening of the taj, and he would say its because we had so much business here this happened. Not because the systems broke down, not because we didnt know what we were doing. Truly he would just lie about everything. Reporter and he did. What about the Slot Machine Thing when they were down for a while . The slots were so hot. Again, nobodys seen people play that hard and that fast. So it blew out the slots. It blew apart. So wrapped up in hyperbole its almost constant lies, whether its the littlest things, you know, where if you had 2,000 people at an event, you know, he would say there was 5,000 people at an event. Reporter and he got away with it. Theres no belief system. If it will work i will say it. If it stops working ill say its opposite and i will not feel any compungz about saying its opposite because i dont feel anything in the first place. Reporter switching gears is exactly what President Trump had to do after his Press Conference with vladimir putin, attempting to walk back this remark on election interference. My people came to me, dan coats came to me and some others. They said they think its russia. I have president putin, he just said its not russia. I will say this, i dont see any reason why it would be. In a key sentence in my
remarks i said the word would instead of wouldnt. The sentence should have been, i dont see any reason why i wouldnt or why it wouldnt be russia. Seeing it from his perspective doesnt make a distinction between whats true and whats false. His only distinction is what will work and what will not work. Reporter and what happens when hes challenged with facts . What does he do . He has a genius, you know, perverse genius for turning any situation into something that is evidence of his brilliance. Even if its not true. Wow, we have a lot to talk about. Gloria, tony, when we come back im going to ask both of you could donald trump have been a success without the lies . It is such a good time to kiss
visit comcastspotlight. Com today. Donald trump has a strategy of ignoring the truth. First in business and now as president. Because it doesnt suit his narrative. The truth gets in the way in his way, and lying is his main mo to get what he wants. Lets discuss now with Gloria Borger and tony schwartz. Glor you, great reporting but i want to start with tony because he cowrote the art of the deal. He really wrote the art of the deal. Could he have been as successful or the appearnce of being as successful as people think he is without lying . Well, hes the product of his own marketing, so i would say, no, he actually couldnt have
been as remotely as successful starting, for example, with the success he had getting on the forbes 500 list when he was worth almost nothing, and he managed to trump it up and convince them it was 10 million or 20 million or 100 million. Himself or pretending to be somebody else no, he would pretend to harangue the reporters gathering that information. Financial analysts tell me theres no evidence hes a billionaire. Rick, it seems as ehes disappeared off the face of the earth, but he once said to me donald is not worth anything. Its a complete joke. Its a house of cards. Gloria, what about in politics . He didnt lie the way he does do you think he would have been able to survive the multiple
scandals so far . Hes a brander. He brands himself, and as tony pointed out in the piece quite astutely i think, with donald trump its not about true or false. Its about will this work for me or wont this work for me . So in a campaign he will do what works for him. And if it doesnt work for him anymore he will turn around and do something else. And thats what we saw in helsinki, for example. And i think this is the way he markets himself. And by the way, what he does is exploit the fact that his supporters hate the media, dont trust the media. You know, three quarters of republicans trust trump more than the media. So he doesnt care. He doesnt care because hell say believe me because you dont trust those guys, you trust me more and it works. Yeah, and some actually believe him. You know, as i say as ive been saying since the election or during the election that new
yorkers knew, people around the country didnt necessarily know. Because they saw him as the apprentice, right . And so maybe that works, that thing you call truthful hyperbole, maybe it works in that instance. Alpha male. Yeah, hes president of the United States. It clearly works. But what i think is trump actually believes, and this is the totalitarian instinct in him, and its very strong. Trump actually believes if he says something over and over again no matter how totally outrageous it is, for example, and i would say this is the best example so far, yesterday the day before when he said what youre seeing is not true we just saw it repeated. What youre seeing is not true, thats prima facia insane. If you say it enough time, no
collusion, no collusion, that you could have collusion in living color, 360 degree and you still would have no argument to make. And gloria, some have said that they believe it, even legal minds that collusion, according to them, has already been proven with the meeting in trump tower and, you know, with the one with jared and donald trump, jr. I dont know if thats so, but legal folks have said that. Theres so much out there that people i guess dont believe because of what the president and this administration have said about it. And if you look at the intensity of whats happening with him saying dont believe what you see or hear, why is it ramping up all of a sudden . Well, look, i think he to a certain degree feels some of the walls closing in on him. He has the Mueller Investigation still going on. His attorneys are still talking to the special counsel about whether hes going to testify and talk about the question of lying, i think one of the
reasons his attorneys dont want him to testify is because theyre worried about it, right . Theyre very worried about it. And i think his back is up against the wall. One of his most ardent loyalists, Michael Cohen, has now turned on him. There is a subpoena for the chief Financial Officer of the Trump Organization to talk to the Southern District of new york. And i think that trump feels the need every day to gather his troops and to say do not believe this, theres no collusion, and again im not saying there is because im not bob mueller. But there is no collusion, dont believe this, the media are lying about this, and that is the way he keeps his supporters activated to a degree because he motivates them. Go ahead, john. Well, i think that in addition to what gloria said i agree with it. Theres something going on psychologically. And the media has it, the culture has it a resistance to talk about mental health, to talk about mental illness. And then youve got the gold water rule that says even professionals cant diagnose from afar. But what you can do is you can observe the behavior, and the behavior is the behavior of a man who decompensating, who is essentially falling apart. And hes falling apart in the sense that he is upping the most extreme behaviors. So when we try to understand why is he lying more, why is he tweeting more frequently, why is he saying more extreme things, all of these are function of whats going on inside him. Which is i am used to controlling the narrative. I am not seeming to be able to do that. What does this say, though, gloria, about his supporters, the way he feels about the people who support him when he constantly lies to them or gives
them false hope and expectations . Well, i dont think its interesting, and i you know, im not psychologist. But i think after aa while if you tell a lie long enough you believe its the truth. And i think that may be donald trump. And i think donald trump is very attach today his supporters. Ive never seen a president reach out less to people who didnt vote for him than trump. Normally president s get elected, they try to unite the country. They say you didnt vote for me but please give me a shot. That is not what weve seen. Weve seen donald trump instead try to consolidate the base even more. And hes a politician. He doesnt want to lose the congress. He doesnt want to lose the presidency if he runs for reelection, and they are devoted to him and he knows it and hes not going to lose them, and this works for him. And setting up enemies always works in politics. And so the press is the enemy,
the democrats are the enemy, you name it. And thats what he does. And it works. Ive got to go quickly. Tony . I think you asked the question what does it say about his supporters. It says something about how aggrieved and how empty you lie to the people you care about. Theres no one who he cares about more than his supporters. They are americas losers. Why do you say that . Because theyre people without power, without success, without all the things he values most they have least. I thought you were going to say theyre a means to an end. They are absolutely a means to the end. When we come back the big question. Will truth in america survive Donald Trumps presidency . We knew helping our communities was important then. And we know its even more important today. So were stepping up to volunteer more and donate over a Million Dollars every day. So our communities can be even stronger. Its a new day at wells fargo. But its a lot like our first day. Of depression or suicidal thoughts, or if these feelings develop. Some people taking otezla reported weight loss. Your doctor should monitor your weight and may stop treatment. Other side effects include Upper Respiratory Tract Infection and headache. Tell your doctor about all the medicines you take and if youre pregnant or planning to be. Otezla. Show more of you. Well, esurance makes finding the right coverage easy. In fact, drivers who switched from geico to esurance saved an average of 412. Thats auto and Home Insurance for the modern world. Esurance. An allstate company. Click or call. All of President Trumps lies in office, all of 2,000 of them so far. Damaging our democracy, and can we ever get back to where we were . Douglas brinkly, Kirsten Powers and carlos lozata. Listen, the president is lying more often than ever, and the lies seem to be more bold. They seem to be boulder than ever. Is the public desensitized to all of his lies . I dont think theyre desensitized. They let him get away with too much. Collectively to mean people didnt read his character directly. Donald trump lies like breathing. He doesnt know what the truth is. But i think hes kind of an odious aberration in american politics. Hes had momentum, hes shocked our system, a product of social
media environment in changing Television Media dynamkz. But the idea were going to have more Donald Trumps yet to come doesnt seem likely to me. I think whats hurting, don, is that the United States, were the beacon of light that the world looks up to us and now were being laughed otat all over the globe, that we produced this caricature of a president. I see his continuing lying as a president thats unraveling right now. You wrote an article whether truth can survive this presidency, and you explore this idea of what you call truth decay. Tell us about that. Yes, people talk about the death of truth, whether we leave in a post. Truth environment. Its probably more productive to think about ways in which truth is decaying or eroding. More than really posttruth, we may be in a postshame sort of environment where the consequences of lying are vastly
diminished. And thats not quite sort of the death of truth. But i think its just as insidious because when there are no consequences to lying accountability is diminished as well. And thats really whats going on with the president s sort of torrent of falsehoods is that hes looking for ways to not be held accountable. If you cant agree on whats truly happened, then how can you decide if your leader is doing a good job. And if you cant decide theyre doing a good job, then what kind of democracy do you have left . Studies show its very difficult for people to tell lies from the truth. The brain first has to accept the lie as a truth and then make a judgment to discard it as false. The first part is natural to the brain. The second part can be disrupted. So people can end up believing the lie. So how do journalists and thinkers overcome that . Well, i think its important
to keep calling it out and keep making it clear when something isnt true, and i think its important to stay outraged. So a lot of times i see people rolling their eyes and sort of saying oh, thats just trump being hyperbolic when in fact hes lying about something. So i think its important to continue to say that and not get lulled into this idea that this is normal. I think one of the problems like you said, people believe it and then they repeat it. Oftentimes when youre trying to have a conversation perhaps on your show or another show and youre talking to somebody who is just, theyre not actually having debate. Theyre not actually talking about facts, theyre just saying things that arent true, jow spend your entire time you know how frustrating that is for me. Youve been here when weve had some of those arguments. Thats why this whole theory of people have to believe the lie first. It has to be true and then you have to sort of think about it and say, okay, thats not real, and that part as i said can be
disrupted. Thats why i like to shut it down right as its happening or fact check people in realtime before they continue on with the lie. And i think thats important to do. People get upset and say, oh, well youre shutting down my right to speak. No, youre lying to people and i understand the process of repeating and people will believe it. I recommend a book called on tyranny by timothy snider. They try to destroy truth, and they dont want there to be any truth. They want everybody to be fighting with each other and turning against each other and eventually tuning out because they get to this point where they say this is too much spectacle. This is what putin does. Theres too much spectacle, and were going to get mad at each other and stop expecting anything from the government. Thats what trump is doing. Its cleary a strategy. Yeah, i think its wrong to think hes too dumb, which i hear people saying. Hes too dumb to do that. I think he understands what hes doing. Its true he has a distorted reality but i also think he knows the things he can say and it doesnt matter. She outlines a pattern where trump uses to gaslight america. Step one, stake a claim on a fringe issue, step two advance and deny which is what trump does when he says things people are saying. And step three, create suspense, and step four discredit the apopants. Step five, declare a victory. So if we can outline a pattern, identify what the president is doing, why cent we stop it . Because he keeps doing it. He understands the power of repetition very much. You know, if you keep saying that you won the biggest electoral landslide in decades, if you keep saying that the tax cut was the biggest tax cut in history, that is going to stick eventually with some people. Especially if the falsehood is in keeping with someones preexisting political believes. If youre inclined for instance to believe that immigrants have a detrimental impact on the American Economy or american society, then you might be inclined to believe it when the president says that, you know, millions of them voted illegally in the election, even though theres no evidence to that effect. So i think he understands the kind of rhythm of how he keeps doing this. Whats also important in this context, remember, is that affirming, accepting or even defending trumps falsehoods is not necessarily about conviction of in that fact. Its about allegiance. Its about standing by your guy. And thats the quality trump prizes above all else which is loyalty. And ive been watching that happen for the last three years. I think its astute you said that. I think its fair to say this presidency is a great experiment as well. The question is and i want to ask my historian Douglas Brinkly can we survive it. Hiv or any other medical conditions and about all the medicines you take including herbal supplements. Taking amiodarone with harvoni can cause a serious slowing of your heart rate. Common side effects of harvoni include tiredness, headache and weakness. Ready to let go of hep c . Ask your hep c specialist about harvoni. Or if you have received a vaccine or plan to. If you have inflammatory bowel disease, tell your doctor if symptoms develop or worsen. Serious allergic reactions may occur. Never give up. See me. See me. Clear skin can last. Dont hold back. Ask your dermatologist if cosentyx can help you find clear skin that lasts. Back now with Douglas Brinkley and Kirsten Powers and carlos save da zaida. And so we laid it out there that is this a democracy that we can
survive. Yes, the presence is not uniquely oppressive and the country has gone through such horrific things, and john meacham has a bookt out about perilous times. And i have three kids can in school, and Everybody Knows that nobody cares that george this like George Orwell that two plus two is five. Because two plus two is four. And i have december 1941s pearl harbor and facts matter. If you think that they dont t matter, you wont get far in the 21st century. We are in a rut, and we have broketen washington politics. It is not about barack obama being just a beacon of light, but people like john mccain and mitt romney were to have a good match with obama. Trump has just been a nightmare and the problem is that the republican s a republicans are not showing courage standing up to somebody
who is a serial liar and somebody who no kid in america can look up to and aspire to be. Yeah. I want you to the listen to this clip from President Obama last week talking about politicians and lying. Unfortunately too much of Politics Today seems to reject the very concept of objective truth. People just make stuff up. They just make stuff up. We see the uter loss of shame of the political leaders who are caught in a lie and they double down and lie some more. This is the thing, carlos. You heard what the former president said, and in your piece, you talk about shame and the role that plays with people, and, but more importantly, you also talk about, you said that we are no more post racial than we are post truth than we were under obama. That is the quote up there. And talk to me about that, and
tell me what you mean by that . Well, at the outset of the obama president si, there wcy t a lot of optimism with striking a blow to racial, and being post racial is a myth. America is quite racial as it turns out. I do think that, you know, speaking of the death of truth or being post truth maybe premature and not to undercut the seriousness of what is going on, and the truth, and factbased information is vital in many other arenas in life, and in politics is where it is really being degraded. Yes. And kirsten, a short time here, and what does it say about us, meaning all of us, as americans, that someone who can appeal to the lowest common denominator can have, can become
the president of the United States . I dont think it says anything writ large about the United States. I do think it says something about people who are tribal and want to believe whatever the leader they support says, but i dont know if it is an indictment of the entire country, and i would say that i am a little bit more al r larmed than carlos is. I think that the fact that it is happening in politics is probably pretty critical, because this is where we shape the policies and how somebody like donald trump gets reelected if this continues. So i think that i do think that it is important to be outrage and concerned, and if people are looking for the practical thingses to do, look for the first thing that authoritarian leaders do is to go after the media media. And it is important the vote and not just get upset. Yes. Vote. Thank you, douglas, kirsten
and carlos. We will be right back. The day after chemo shouldnt mean going back to the doctor just for a shot. With Neulasta Onpro patients get their day back to be with family, or just to sleep in. Strong chemo can put you at risk of serious infection. In a key study neulasta reduced the risk of infection from 17 to 1 , a 94 decrease. Neulasta onpro is designed to deliver neulasta the day after chemo and is used by most patients today. Neulasta is for certain Cancer Patients receiving strong chemotherapy. Do not take neulasta if youre allergic to
it or Neupogen Filgrastim . An incomplete dose could increase infection risk. Ruptured spleen, sometimes fatal as well as serious Lung Problems allergic reactions, Kidney Injuries and Capillary Leak Syndrome have occurred. Report abdominal or shoulder tip pain, Trouble Breathing or allergic reactions to your doctor right away. In patients with sickle cell disorders, serious, sometimes fatal crises can occur. The most common side effect is bone and muscle ache. Ask your doctor about Neulasta Onpro. Pay no more than 25 per dose with copay card. We have one to two fires a day and when you respond together and you put your lives on the line, you do have to surround yourself with experts. And for us the expert in gas and electric is pg e. We run about 2,500 2,800 fire calls a year and on almost every one of those calls
pg e is responding to that call as well. And so when we show up to a fire and pg e shows up with us it makes a tremendous team during a moment of crisis. I rely on them, the firefighters in this department rely on them, and so we have to practice safety everyday. Utilizing pg es talent and expertise in that area trains our firefighters on the gas or electric aspect of a fire and when we have an Emergency Situation we are going to be much more skilled and prepared to mitigate that emergency for all concerned. The things we do every single day that puts ourselves in harms way, and to have a partner that is so skilled at what they do is indispensable, and i couldnt ask for a better partner. A book that youre ready to share with the world . Get published now, call for your free publisher kit today
but i am a simple farmer. Bas my life is here. [telephone ring] ahoyhoy. Alexander graham bell here. No, no, my number is one, you must want two two, i say like my father before. [telephone ring] like my father before. Ahoyhoy as long as people talk too loudly on the phone, you can count on geico saving folks money. Fifteen minutes could save you fifteen percent or more on car insurance. The winter of 77. Uring i first met james in 5th grade. We got married after college. And had twin boys. But then one night, a truck didnt stop. But thanks to our forester, neither did our story. And thats why well always drive a subaru
vimarsana.com © 2020. All Rights Reserved.