President Donald Trump issues statements that span the spectrum of exaggeration to downright lying all the time — and one CNN fact checker has identified a mainstay of those comments that nearly always signals dishonesty.
I noticed that ‘sir’ thing a while back; it’s not just a tell indicative of a lie – it’s an indication of his pathetic neediness and desperation for respect.
I wonder how the admirals/generals he meets with don’t choke when he recounts some interaction where he repeats that a million times.
Also, whenever he uses the ‘people are telling me’, ‘people are saying’,and ‘I’m hearing from many people’ lines, it’s a virtual guarantee that he’s telling another lie.
Daniel Dale is a treasure. I hope he gets a book deal or something out of his tireless monitoring of Trump’s falsehoods.
Every word that comes out of his mouth is a lie. Including “a” and “the.”
(Hat tip to Mary McCarthy.)
And of course: ‘believe me’.
Yes,! I caught that tell a little while ago.
I think I’ve noticed one of his truth-tells. It goes, ‘I said to myself, I said ____________’. The statement that follows may not, in fact, be true but I think he believes it to be true.
Trump’s lies are not news but it is good to see the facts listed.
Another tell: He opens his mouth.
Trump will say something and then expect reality to conform to his statement. That is deep pathology right there.
Or, to paraphrase the old joke: How do you tell when Trump is lying?
His lips are moving.
Yeah the other tell is any time he makes a statement that does not include the word “sir”.
Bear in mind that his utterances are neither true nor false. They’re incantations. Taken as statements, one or another sentence fragment might accidentally be true. But it’s all just bullshit.
It is about time Dale was paid more attention to. He has been doing yeoman work on Trump for some time.
“they are almost guaranteed to be at least somewhat false”
Somewhat? I really hate that passivity.
It’s also a bit of a giveaway because, for the last few years, people - at least people who work for him - haven’t been calling him “sir”. You address the president as “Mr President”, not as “sir”.
At the rate Trump is lying that wouldn’t be a book deal, it would have to be published online. Something akin to Wikipedia because of the edits, the footnotes, the citations, and the uncovering of more and more lies.
Besides we don’t have enough trees to publish in a hard copy format to contain all the untruths.
Funny how the people who always seem to be telling him these “sir” statements are never around to corroborate when he quotes them?
The most frequent tell? His lips are moving.
I’m not going to address that individual as “Mr. President.” No. Never. (When he took office, I resolved that I would not use the words “president” and his last name together. And except for maybe one or two slips, I’ve managed it.)