Donald Trump, who told nearly 2,000 lies during his first year in the White House, says he is all in on participating in an interview under oath with Special Counsel Robert Mueller.
Mueller’s investigation, which continues to ramp up, is focused on two major components: 1. Whether Trump’s campaign actively worked with Russia during the 2016 election; and 2. Whether the president obstructed justice by firing former FBI Director James Comey, among other things.
Trump’s decision to agree to an interview under oath with Mueller could be the final nail in his political coffin.
As Jason Easley noted a short time ago, “Trump is being warned by people close to him that Mueller is ‘a killer,’ and that he should stay away and not do a sit down with the Special Counsel.”
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The reason this president has been warned not to agree to an interview with Mueller is obvious: Trump simply doesn’t know how to tell the truth. We’ve seen that repeatedly over the course of his first year in office.
According to a stunning Washington Post report earlier this month, Trump told 1,950 lies over the course of his first 347 days in the Oval Office. That’s nearly six lies per day.
Of course, just one lie during an under-oath interview with Mueller would be enough to sink him – but even that’s a tall order for this president. In fact, during a recent 30-minute interview with the New York Times, Trump told a stunning 24 lies.
If that troubling pattern was to be carried over into a three-hour interview with Mueller, Trump could tell as many as 144 lies.
It’s hard to know what Trump will say behind closed doors with the man who could potentially bring down his presidency, but one thing is clear: This is a president whose relationship with the truth is casual at best.
As Jason Easley also mentioned earlier tonight, “Trump just cut his lawyers off at the knees by publicly agreeing to do the one thing that they absolutely did not want him to do.”
Ultimately, the question likely isn’t whether Trump will lie under oath during his interview with Robert Mueller. Instead, it’s how many lies will the president tell.
Sean Colarossi currently resides in Cleveland, Ohio. He earned his Bachelor of Arts degree in Journalism from the University of Massachusetts Amherst and was an organizing fellow for both of President Obama’s presidential campaigns. He also worked with Planned Parenthood as an Affordable Care Act Outreach Organizer in 2014, helping northeast Ohio residents obtain health insurance coverage.
