Last updated on July 17th, 2023 at 06:53 pm
Spoiler alert! Donald Trump lied. Again.
And he got busted. Again. And his supporters won’t care. Again.
Politifact (they must be so tired over there) awarded Trump their Pants on Fire rating for his claim that Michelle Fields changed her story about the assault perpetrated upon her by Trump’s campaign manager Corey Lewandowski.
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Our ruling
Trump said that when Michelle Fields “found out that there was a security camera, and that they had her on tape, all of a sudden that story changed.
We see no evidence that Fields’ story about her altercation with Trump’s campaign manager has changed. She gave an initial account and hasn’t backed off of it.
We rate Trump’s claim Pants on Fire.
When security footage came out that proved Donald Trump’s campaign manager did grab reporter Michelle Fields, thus prompting the Florida police to charge Lewandowski with assault, naturally the Republican front-runner Donald Trump pretended the opposite were true.
Tuesday, March 29th, 2016 during a CNN town hall, Trump said Michelle Fields, “found out that there was a security camera, and that they had her on tape, all of a sudden that story changed.”
See, that’s almost what happened only the opposite. The security footage backed up Fields’ account and the bruises on her arm, and this is why the police charged Lewandowski.
Note: No one has charged Fields with assault, though Trump did threaten to do that, as if he were in charge of not only reality, but all police stations, police procedure and the definitions of crimes and interpretations and implementation of the law. Trump is all the branches of government! Just leave it all to him.
This was followed up by great Trump lamentations about the dangers to his person via Fields’ pen and ruminations from the Great Oz of Self Pity about pressing charges against Fields for doing her job, because it’s never enough to just gaslight reality…
… A top notch con artist will always take it to the next level, and demand an apology from their victim while nursing imaginary wounds.
If you’re thinking what a horror show Donald Trump is, please remember that it wasn’t so long ago that Senator Rand Paul’s Senate campaign employee Tim Profitt demanded an apology from the woman whose head he curb stomped at one of the Senator’s rallies.
Gaslighting is just another privilege of the abuser. And by the way, this is how the Republican party got where it is today. All of these instances where they sided with abusers, racists, criminals and cheaters got them Donald Trump.
Here is what Fields first said of the incident, “I was jolted backwards. Someone had grabbed me tightly by the arm and yanked me down. I almost fell to the ground, but was able to maintain my balance. Nonetheless, I was shaken.”
The video backed up Michelle Fields’ claim.
Corey Lewandowski called Fields “delusional†for saying he did what he actually did. And this, America, is the point. The next time Trump says something didn’t happen, just know that it most likely did happen. The angrier his henchman get, the more true the accusation probably is.
Their outrage and claims of victimhood are actually their big tell.
Trump has a 9% rate of telling the truth or mostly truth, which means 91% of what he says is inaccurate at best. But it still matters because we must cling to reality in the face of his ongoing efforts to gaslight Americans into the dark ages, otherwise the little lies will build into the dangerous, big lie.
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Sarah has been credentialed to cover President Barack Obama, then VP Joe Biden, 2016 Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, and exclusively interviewed Speaker Nancy Pelosi multiple times and exclusively covered her first home appearance after the first impeachment of then President Donald Trump.
Sarah is two-time Telly award winning video producer and a member of the Society of Professional Journalists.
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