To Tell The Truth

It has been said that people who tell the truth rarely have difficulty defending their remarks, while those who lie on a regular basis can rarely defend themselves without telling yet more lies. This is as true of a five year-old child who scribbled on the bedroom wall with crayon, as it is of a politician or public figure that makes wildly incendiary statements, then leave the mess behind to be tidied up by their public relations staff or spokespersons.

In the past few weeks we have watched individuals in both the Clinton and Trump camps try to spin public perceptions of comments or data coming out about their candidate.  The difference between the two camps is remarkable in one key way. The Clinton campaign seems to have a united voice, even when addressing some very troubling information, they seem to be on the same page and have plausible, if not appropriate, explanations for their candidates ongoing controversies.

The Trump camp displays the exact opposite to a co-ordinated effort to address the increasingly incendiary remarks coming from the person of Donald J. Trump. Try as they might to explain away his comments, assert that Trump was being sarcastic, or shift the focus of scrutiny back to Trump's opponents, each spokesperson or surrogate seems to have a different take on deciphering Trump's bizarre rhetoric or outright lies. On a regular basis, Trump spokesperson Katrina Pierson is caught in outright lies, revisions of history, and deflections.  Prominent Republicans including Rudy Giuliani and Trump's VP candidate Mike Pence, among others, have participated in efforts to explain Trump's behavior or even suggest that media bias is the true villain.

But if Trump continues to blame the 'crooked' media, to talk about banning whole networks or publications from having access to his campaign, he is only biting the hand that has been feeding him heaps of free advertising for well over a year now.  The moment a media source disagrees with Trump's assertion of facts, or question his inability to stop drawing focus to himself, and in doing so distract from the very real concerns facing his Democratic opponent Hillary Clinton, he blasts them on Twitter or at one of his many rally stops.  Why telling the truth is so foreign to Trump and his campaign staff is such a challenge, particularly when the candidate himself can't seem to stick to the issues that voters want to focus on, is incongruous with a serious attempt to make a play for Commander in Chief.

Here are the last seven Tweets from the @realDonaldTrump Twitter feed, all posted within the last 12 hours. Each and every Tweet blames the media for misdirecting the conversation away from Hillary Clinton's very real potential conflicts and lack of separation between her role as Secretary of State and the machinations of The Clinton Global Initiative charity. What each tweet fails to recognize in spectacular fashion is that Trump is the reason the focus is being pulled away from Clinton, his actions and behavior are drawing attention, not any particular media bias. It is a case of 'thou doth protest too much, methinks'.

I am not saying in any way that Hillary Clinton is the more truthful of the two candidates, I don't know that to be the case, but what I do know is that Donald J. Trump can't seem to tell the truth from a lie, even when it is a lie he himself is telling. Trump's assertions that he is a non-politically correct, shoot from the hip, truth teller would be perfectly acceptable to his base, if truth had anything to do with what was coming out of the man's mouth or Twitter account. But when a 'truth-teller' seems to have no handle on truth, and no concern for accuracy, no awareness of the right granted under the US Constitution; his claims of media bias simply don't add up.

In the last week, Trump has made wildly untrue accusations about ISIS, complained that the only way he could lose is if the voting stations are rigged against him, he even made crass so-called jokes about 'Second Amendment Solutions' to deal with his political rivals.  The fact that the media has covered these events is not about bias, it is about Trump's loose association with the power of language, the truth, and the seriousness one must have when speaking as a politician on the world stage.  The media didn't suddenly develop a bias, it has been there all along. Trump's complaints about that bias seems rooted in his belief that he is being misrepresented, that others are at fault for his behavior, and that he the media, not his own actions, are shifting focus away from his opponent.

To tell the truth, Mr. Trump, if you want to halt the media in it's tracks, stop being such an outrageous fame-whore and start talking issues. If the Trump campaign could get their act together for even a brief moment, then maybe Hillary Clinton would be forced to deal with the very real issues voters are having with her campaign and it's maneuvering.  As long as Trump turns his anger away from Clinton, and towards the media, he is only making his precarious position in the polls worse, and risking further backlash as one media outlet after another becomes the focus of a Trump attack.

For a man who claims to be a strong winner, a non-insider, a maverick if you will, Trump is all talk, weak excuses, and finger pointing. For a 'tough guy', Trump does an awful lot of whining and complaining about fair treatment. This all tends to lead media and voters alike to question whether Trump is even serious about winning the election, or whether this is just a ridiculous publicity stunt orchestrated to secure Clinton her Presidency, or cement Donald J. Trump as the most ridiculous man to ever have designs on taking public office. I am starting to wonder if both scenarios might be true, simultaneously, and that is my honest truth.

Children Talk Trump

Having the occasion to spend a few hours with my nephew and nieces, ages 10, 12, 14, and 19, we were flipping channels looking for Olympic coverage when we happened to land on a station featuring yet another shocking story about Donald J. Trump. Trump stood on a a dias, behind his podium, not surprisingly sliding in yet another dig at US President Barack Obama, or as Trump calls him 'Barack Hussein Obama'. This time he was making light of his witty use of sarcasm after having doubled down on his claim that the current president, along with his M.V.P.  Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, were the actual founders of the terrorist group ISIL. As he laughed off the incident as a clear example of sarcasm, Trump couldn't help but give his audience one more gem by adding "but not that sarcastic" in a mock-muffled tone.

Why am I surprised that I am no longer surprised by the sheer volume of verbal diarrhea coming out of candidate Trump? When did this become something I can almost anticipate like clockwork in conjunction with his first Tweets of the morning and ending with his final call of the day to his pep squad over at Fox 'news'.  Is everyone who has been subjected to over 12 months of Trump, not unlike a form of ongoing torture, so used to the shock and pain that we have adjusted our truth-o-meters to accommodate bananas? If we have become immuned to it, what is happening to the children who are watching the Trump campaign break every rule we have been trying to teach them since the history of forever?

We teach our babies to; be gentle, be kind, be a good friend, tell the truth, say you are sorry, play nicely with others, share, be polite, be compassionate. We teach them by showing them the example of lived values. We praise them if the situation warrants, we laugh with them, we cry with them, we help them learn coping strategies. We tell them that there is value in a good work ethic, that cheaters never win in the end, that as long as they do their very best, we will be their biggest cheerleaders. We tell them it is wrong to make fun of people who have limitations or are different from them, that children are children are children. We tell them that boys and girls are both wonderful and important people, and that even though they might not have many persons of colour in their class, that the world is a beautiful place because everyone is different, and everyone has their own unique beauty and gifts. Most of all, we tell them that when they are older and they find someone they love, someone that treats them with loving respect and kindness, that we will be happy for them, because love is precious and all people deserve love.

I looked at the faces of these four amazing kids, all with varying degrees of confusion registered on their faces, and I decided it was time to turn off the television. I really worry about what kids are taking away from the 'race to the bottom' Election 2016 coverage. I decided it was time to check-in with them and ask them what they thought about what they just saw. I simply posed a question and the responses of these four kids, all raised in different homes, all talented in a dozen different unique ways, are a very small snapshot of what parents across the globe, and particularly in the US are currently juggling, actively or perhaps by their inaction.

So I asked the question, a kid-friendly and appropriate question, one I would be likely to ask after a rough day at school or squabble among neighborhood children;

Q: If somebody said something really mean about you, something that wasn't true, and then apologized to you, how would you feel? How would you feel if right after that person made an apology, they said "but I'm not THAT sorry"? 

Without missing a beat, all four sun-bleached, tanned and wide eyed kids starting to shake their heads back and forth. The youngest, and only boy, immediately said precisely what I anticipated from him. A very empathetic and loyal friend, he piped in with "then that mean person was never really sorry at all, they were just saying it because someone told them to". He shook his head a few times and threw his arms up in exasperation adding, "but Trump is a rump". Yes little man, Trump is definitely a rump.

My 19 year-old niece quickly added, "Trump is an old man, he should know that when you say you are sorry for something, you have to mean it. If you can't apologize when you are caught lying, then you are acting like a bratty little kid, not an adult." Yes, she nailed it too. She went on "Trump lies like this every single day, and he even lies about his lies." Clearly someone has been discussing politics in her vicinity, and I owe that person bigtime.

The 12 year old, who spends most days dancing or doing gymnastics, was quick to support her older sister and cousin. "I don't think that guy even knows what an apology is for. Everything he says looks like he is just trying to be funny." Well, leave it to the kids to always call a spade a spade. This little goober went back to trying to do the splits on the area rug in front of the sofa.

Finally, my 14 year old niece looking suddenly much more her age and just returned home from sleepaway camp in Nova Scotia made every one of us in the room choke from laughter as she added, "Oh that's just Donald Trump, he always says crazy things for attention. He is so completely stupid. He knows he makes lies everyday and can't remember what he said, but he doesn't even care because he doesn't know what sorry even means." Then she went back to taking selfies, many many selfies.

Out of the mouths of babes.