Eric Alterman - Lying in State: Why Presidents Lie -- And Why Trump Is Worse

Copyright 2020 by Eric Alterman

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First Edition: August 2020

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Alterman, Eric, author.

Title: Lying in state: why presidents lieand why Trump is worse / Eric Alterman.

Other titles: Why presidents lieand why Trump is worse

Description: First edition. | New York, NY: Basic Books, 2020. | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2020008737 | ISBN 9781541616820 (hardcover) | ISBN 9781541616813 (ebook)

Subjects: LCSH: PresidentsUnited StatesHistory. | Truthfulness and falsehoodPolitical aspectsUnited StatesHistory. | United StatesPolitics and government. | Political ethicsUnited States.

Classification: LCC E176.1 .A628 2020 | DDC 177/.30973dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020008737

ISBNs: 978-1-5416-1682-0 (hardcover), 978-1-5416-1681-3 (e-book)

E3-20200708-JV-NF-ORI

To Laura Hercher, my shelter from the storm, with love, gratitude and admiration. (And most of all, alas amazement.)

Thats the thing about lies, right? Individually, they dont amount to much. But you never know how many others youll need to tell to protect that first one. And damned if they dont add up. Over time they all get tangled up, until one day you realize it isnt even the lies themselves that matter, its that somehow lying has become your default mode and the person you lie to most is yourself.

R ICHARD R USSO , Chances Are (2019)

My understanding of the meaning of the word lie begins with the Augustinian argument that a lie consists in speaking a falsehood with the intention of deceiving. But because a president is more than just an individual, our definition must be considerably more expansive. A presidential lie takes place when the president or someone with the authority to speak for the president seeks to purposely mislead the country about a matter of political significance. The president can remain silent while his subordinates lie for him. He can censor the truth or impede the means to discover it. In my judgment, the only significant criterion is whether the deception itself, however operationally undertaken, is purposeful. If it was accidental or based on ignorance or a misunderstanding, it can be corrected and therefore should be.

One reason journalists often offer for eschewing the word lie when writing or talking about presidential lies is their inability to discern the speakers intent. In this book, however, I am less interested in intent than responsibility. If it was the presidents professional responsibility to know the truth about something and he did not bother to learn it, or he and his subordinates purposely avoided sharing information in order to establish plausible deniability, I still call it a lie.

In the pages that follow, I reject the excuses often offered for the kinds of deceptions Ive just described, such as that the president was disengaged, confused, or distracted; that God told him; or that hes just an unbelievable narcissist. I also consider censorship, when it is purposely deployed to misinform, to count as a lie. This is not to condemn censorship per se. Societies cannot protect themselves without it. The Constitution, as various Supreme Court justices have observed (albeit for competing arguments), is not a suicide pact. But the power to prevent speech is awfully easy to abuse for personal and political gain, and when this happens, it functions as a lie. Secrecy is also an a priori necessity of governance, especially in wartime. But it, too, can easily bleed into dishonesty when abused, and abuse tends to its natural path when presidents are given the power to determine what citizens should and should not know. Under certain circumstances, therefore, as we shall see, it is possible for a president or his representative to lie by silencing others, and by saying nothing at all.