Major news organizations are still reckoning with how to report on the President's lies.
Throughout last week, President Trump repeated his calumny that he lost the popular vote only because millions of "illegals" voted for Hillary Clinton. Trump's obsession with this subject may arise from his pathological need to tally every score in his own favor, but he surely knows that his propaganda also advances the Republican Party's efforts to extend barriers to legitimate voting by Latinos and African-Americans, through voter-I.D. requirements and other state laws.
Diverse studies have turned up no evidence of significant fraud in recent elections. Trump nonetheless vowed to sign an executive order commissioning a federal investigation.
One might wish that the solemn responsibility of leading a nuclear-armed world power would steer a successful seventy-year-old man away from routinely telling whoppers, yet it is hardly surprising that Trump has not changed since taking the oath of office.
When the Founders enacted the First Amendment, they could not have imagined the personage of Donald Trump, but they did have tyrants in mind.
Source: The New Yorker, February 6, 2017
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