Donald Trump is angry.
Sarah Huckabee Sanders is angry.
And, most of all, Kellyanne Conway is angry.
They are all angry because the White House press corps, the national columnists, the local and regional editorial boards, and most galling of all, the independent fact check sites around the country have decided to call out each and every lie this President and his White House utter.
Big or small, the universal commitment is to the truth.
And in the case of this President and this White House, the truth hurts.
Kellyanne Conway says this decision by the media to demand the truth 100% of the time is somehow unpatriotic.
I say, this decision to demand the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth 100% of the time is the most patriotic thing the press can do!
So what has the President lied about?
It is easier to list what he hasn’t lied about.
The President lied about the size of his inaugural crowds.
He lied about his wife conducting a press conferences to prove once and for all that she never worked illegally in the United States, the same offense that Trump is now using to deport thousands of longtime, hardworking illegal immigrants.
The President lied about having a ‘secret plan’ to defeat ISIS in 30 days and about having a ‘secret plan’ to end the murders in Chicago in one week.
He lied when he said after five days in office that North Korea would never successfully build a missile that could reach America during his term in office despite being told by President Obama that such a success was imminent.
The President lied about building a wall and forcing Mexico to pay for it.
He lied when he said millions of people voted illegally, and without those votes he, and not his opponent would have won the popular vote.
The President lied about the Republicans being ready on Day One to repeal and replace Obamacare.
He lied when he claimed his economic policies would lead to an unprecedented 4% economic expansion which instead has generated a growth rate of less than 2%, with slumps in consumer spending, construction, and auto sales.
The President lied about making the world respect the United States as they had in the past, given that survey research from around the globe (except in Saudi Arabia, Israel and Russia) shows our standing among the rest of the world is the lowest it has ever been.
He lied when he claimed that after the election nobody was going to be ‘more Presidential’ than was he.
The President lied about never having employed undocumented workers to build Trump Tower in NYC.
He lied when he said the former President of the United States had personally ‘tapped his wires’ while he was a candidate for President himself.
The President lied about the negative impacts of the Paris Climate Change Accords on America and then doubled down on that lie by minimizing its positive impacts on our country and the world.
He lied when he claimed despite all evidence to the contrary that his deal with Saudi Arabia would produce ‘thousands of new jobs’ in the US.
The President lied about ‘not cutting a single penny out of the Medicaid budget’.
He lied about moving the US embassy in Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.
The President lied about the funding of NATO, getting the direct funding numbers wrong, and being both imprecise as well as out of date on the indirect funding of that critical agency.
He lied when he claimed to have ‘invented’ the phrase, ‘prime the pump’ and, according to 37 independent academic economists, also lied when he claimed is proposed tax cuts ”would stimulate the economy enough to cancel out the effect on total tax revenue”.
And now for his worst, most heinous, most despicable lie of all, the President lied to his voters, to the American people, and to the entire world when he denied this past Thursday in Poland that there was even a scintilla of doubt that it was the Russian government and Vladimir Putin who successfully meddled in the 2016 election.
Shame on him for that last lie most of all.