re: #222 Hecuba’s daughter

Trump KNOWS HE IS LYING and he does it anyway. This is 1984 writ large. We should all use LIE every time he speaks. A person can mistakenly repeat something that turns out to be untrue, but if the speaker doesn’t care whether it is true then it has to be called a LIE.

In most cases, Trump really knows the truth but he is trying to pervert his listener’s perception; in the other cases, he DOESN’T CARE. My brother still believes Trump was not mocking the disabled reporter. So Trump’s lies work. Maggie is such a hack.

This. We’ve already had people say, on the record, how Trump gives the game away in private, that he says that he lies and calls shit fake news precisely to try and delegitimize the media. Trying to get him off the hook because of some belief that ‘he somehow believes it’ is bullshit.

And yes, ‘demonstrable falsehoods’, ‘stretching the truth’, ‘unconfirmed claims’ are definitely less powerful than saying ‘lie’. What have Dems been told consistently about having to use direct, honest language and how part of our problem is being ‘too clever by half’ and ‘too wonky’? THIS is part of that: the word ‘lie’ is powerful because it’s short, direct, and to the point. ‘Demonstrable falsehoods’ and the like get people to tune out and give way too much wiggle room as euphemisms and other kinds of floral language do.