Madam President

Hillary more honest and trustworthy than Trump

Photo Illustration by Sarah Rogers/The Daily Beast, via the Daily Beast

Any U.S. citizen who believes that Donald Trump is more honest and trustworthy than Hillary Clinton has not been following the trail of lies Trump leaves behind him at every exchange with a media representative or at one of his violence-prone rallies. Well, at least Nicholas Kristof, NY Times op-ed columnist, isn't buying Trump's fabrications; Kristof tells it like it is regarding Trumpism.

Here's an excerpt from Kristof's September 15, 2016 column:
 

One of the mental traps that we all fall into, journalists included, is to perceive politics through narratives.

President Gerald Ford had been a star football player, yet somehow we in the media developed a narrative of him as a klutz — so that every time he stumbled, a clip was on the evening news. Likewise, we in the media wrongly portrayed President Jimmy Carter as a bumbling lightweight, even as he tackled the toughest challenges, from recognizing China to returning the Panama Canal.

Then in 2000, we painted Al Gore as inauthentic and having a penchant for self-aggrandizing exaggerations, and the most memorable element of the presidential debates that year became not George W. Bush’s misstatements but Gore’s dramatic sighs.

I bring up this checkered track record because I wonder if once again our collective reporting isn’t fueling misperceptions.

A CNN/ORC poll this month found that by a margin of 15 percentage points, voters thought Donald Trump was “more honest and trustworthy” than Hillary Clinton. Let’s be frank: This public perception is completely at odds with all evidence.

On the PolitiFact website, 13 percent of Clinton’s statements that were checked were rated “false” or “pants on fire,” compared with 53 percent of Trump’s. Conversely, half of Clinton’s are rated “true” or “mostly true” compared to 15 percent of Trump statements.

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Trump incites Americans to violence

The face of hatred. Photo via Wonkette.

Come on, people! Are we so desensitized by politics as usual in the US of A that we brush aside Donald Trump's casual suggestion that it would be okay to shoot Hillary Clinton or maybe her appointees to the Supreme Court?

Do Americans have no recourse in this situation as the nominee of one of our two major political parties encourages murdering his opponent? .

Are we not even surprised or shocked? How on earth did Donald Trump get as far as he has in our supposedly developed nation? Or maybe if we look a little deeper, we're as underdeveloped as those nations we like to hold up as examples of those backward folks.

My fellow Americans, is there no defense in our supposedly civilized culture against incitement to violence, even murder?

It's past time for Republicans to take action and boot the Donald out of their camp. Dan Rather has the right idea:

Former anchorman Dan Rather has issued a challenge to his colleagues: "This cannot be treated as just another outrageous moment in the campaign." 

Rather is talking about Donald Trump's remark that "Second Amendment people" might be able to stop Hillary Clinton's appointment of Supreme Court justices.

The comment raised the specter of political violence and earned widespread condemnation, though Trump supporters denied that he was encouraging violence.

"To anyone who still pretends this is a normal election of Republican against Democrat, history is watching. And I suspect its verdict will be harsh," Rather wrote on Facebook shortly after it happened on Tuesday afternoon.

Related: New York Daily News calls for Trump to end his campaign
 
Rather -- who covered the assassination of John F. Kennedy in Dallas -- called Trump's "Second Amendment people" remark "a new low," unprecedented "in the history of American presidential politics."
 
Writing about political figures who have reluctantly endorsed Trump, he said, "Many have tried to do a side-shuffle and issue statements saying they strongly disagree with his rhetoric but still support the candidate. That is becoming woefully insufficient. The rhetoric is the candidate."
Fellow journalists were the other audience for his Facebook post.

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