In the age of Trump shocking news no longer shocks people. And today’s NBC News/Survey Monkey poll is a case in point.
We should all be shocked by this poll which shows that only 37% of respondents believe that our president tells the truth “all or most of the time.” How can the United States government effectively operate when it is lead by a huckster con artist reality TV show star?
The answer is: it can’t. But yet enough people support him to keep in power anyway, at least temporarily.
Unsurprisingly, many more Republicans think he is honest than other people do. In our polarized world of politics this is par for the course.  Seventy-six percent of Republicans said that he tells the truth either all or most of the time, while just 22 percent believe that he is mostly dishonest.  Even most Republicans who think President Donald Trump does not tell the truth still give him positive job approval ratings, which is disturbing. This means that they have no expectations that the President of the United States will tell us the truth, and they don’t care.
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But according to NBC News, “an overwhelming majority of Democrats and Democratic-leaners (94 percent) and three-quarters of independents (76 percent) believe the president tells the truth only some of the time or even less frequently.”
Those are amazing numbers. Almost all Democrats think Trump lies most of the time. And very few of them think he’s doing a good job as president either.
The bad news for Republicans is that Trump’s credibility and job approval is so low among independents. These are typically the voters who determine election outcomes because they don’t vote according to party identification but according to how much they like or dislike the candidates.
Yesterday the Washington Post fact-checker ran a story with the headline “President Trump has made 3,001 false or misleading claims so far.” According to the Post:
“In the 466 days since he took the oath of office, President Trump has made 3,001 false or misleading claims, according to The Fact Checker’s database that analyzes, categorizes and tracks every suspect statement uttered by the president. That’s an average of nearly 6.5 claims a day.”
So the bad news is that Trump continually lies, but the good news is that most people recognize this about him. However, the really bad news is that a habitual liar like Trump has so much political support, especially among Republicans. Hopefully that will change before permanent damage is done to our republic.
I am a lifelong Democrat with a passion for social justice and progressive issues. I have degrees in writing, economics and law from the University of Iowa.
