If you have been keeping track, Donald Trump doesn’t have the best record when it comes to telling the truth. According to PolitiFact’s count, President Trump has made 262 statements that were “mostly false,” “false,” or “pants on fire.” Those statements account for 70 percent of Trump’s claims the Pulitzer Prize winning site has investigated.
So, you can understand where NBC News reporter Peter Alexander was coming from when he asked White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer a pointed question on Monday, “when should Americans trust the President?”
After a lengthy back and forth that covered the President’s statements on wiretapping, job reports, the CBO’s review of the GOP health care plan, and voter fraud, Spicer snapped back at Alexander, “if he’s not joking!”
Other reporters jumped on Spicer for his inconsistencies in dealing with the President’s statements, particularly his tweets. Spicer has previously said that the President’s “tweet speaks for the themselves,” however when it comes to the claim that Obama had Trump’s “wires tapped,” Spicer said that a more nuanced view should be used.
Spicer said:
“He literally had it in quotes. He said it was in quotes. It was referring to surveillance overall.”
You can view the exchange here (story continues below):
To be Donald Trump’s spokesperson is an unenviable job. Trump spouts off on Twitter and makes outrageous claims in speeches, but then feeds poor Sean Spicer to the proverbial wolves of the press. It must be extremely difficult to remember the President’s stance on a particular topic if he is not truthful 70 percent of the time. As the great Mark Twain wrote in 1894:
“If you tell the truth you don’t have to remember anything.”
