In an interview this weekend on CNN's Unreliable Sources, Counselor to the President Kellyanne Conway explained to anchor Brian Stelter that it is unfair to criticize Donald Trump for lying, on account of the fact that he doesn't know he is lying. He is but a wee widdle innocent President boy who cannot be expected to know the difference between the truth and a lie. A babe in the woods of veracity, if you will.
Kellyanne started out her interview by very professionally telling Stelter how nice she and the new White House communications director Anthony Scaramucci are for deigning to appear on their little network, even though CNN is so mean to Donald Trump, and keeps focusing on "scandals" and trying to push the "non-story" of Russia interfering in the election.
Stelter then brought up the fact that many of these "scandals" they are so upset about CNN covering could easily be avoided by Trump not lying about things, noting, "The scandals are about the president’s lies, about voter fraud, about wire-tapping, his repeated lies about those issues. That’s the scandal."
"He doesn’t think he’s lying about those issues, and you know it," Conway said, blissfully unaware that this was not, perhaps, as clever a retort as she thought it was.
Brian Stelter responded, "A lot of husbands don’t think they’re lying when they cheat on their spouse and then say they’re not. It doesn’t mean they’re not lying."
"Oh, are you back to the Clintons now?" Kellyanne Conway asked, "What are you talking about? What kind of analogy is that?"
A better analogy, of course, would be a child insisting that there is a bogeyman hiding out in their closet—who isn't lying, necessarily, because it feels true to them. Well-adjusted adults, however, when told that they said something that is incorrect or not true, usually say "Whoops! Guess I was wrong! Sorry!" rather than doubling down and insisting that it is true, simply because it feels true to them.
While we wouldn't criticize a child for believing in a bogeyman, we can and should criticize an adult man who is the President of the United States for believing things that are untrue, whether they "think" they are or not. Because either he's lying or he's delusional, and neither of those things is really a trait we should be encouraging in our world leaders.
