nytimes: All the President's Lies [View all]
The ninth week of Donald Trumps presidency began with the F.B.I. director calling him a liar.
The director, the very complicated James Comey, didnt use the L-word in his congressional testimony Monday. Comey serves at the pleasure of the president, after all. But his meaning was clear as could be. Trump has repeatedly accused Barack Obama of wiretapping his phones, and Comey explained there is no information that supports the claim.
Ive previously argued that not every untruth deserves to be branded with the L-word, because it implies intent and somebody can state an untruth without doing so knowingly. George W. Bush didnt lie when he said Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, and Obama didnt lie when he said people who liked their current health insurance could keep it. They made careless statements that proved false (and they deserved much of the criticism they got).
But the current president of the United States lies. He lies in ways that no American politician ever has before. He has lied about among many other things Obamas birthplace, John F. Kennedys assassination, Sept. 11, the Iraq War, ISIS, NATO, military veterans, Mexican immigrants, Muslim immigrants, anti-Semitic attacks, the unemployment rate, the murder rate, the Electoral College, voter fraud and his groping of women.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/20/opinion/all-the-presidents-lies.html