Letter: Trump lies and then doubles down, belittling challengers
Mark Twain is credited with popularizing the saying, “There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.” I wonder what Twain would say about the Republican Party’s constant barrage of charges that Hillary Clinton is a liar, while turning a blind eye to their candidate’s near-epic litany of fabrications, frauds, fakery and phantasmagoria.
Let’s be honest, for a change, Hillary Clinton has lied. But to paraphrase Yogi Berra, half the lies they tell about Clinton lying aren’t true. Where she has bent the truth, she’s admitted it — awkwardly perhaps, e.g., “I short-circuited,” but she’s come clean. Not Donald Trump. He lies and then doubles down, belittling whoever has the temerity to challenge him.
What’s worse, Donald Trump lies to bamboozle, to swindle, to cheat. Often, the people he’s victimized are society’s most vulnerable — people down on their luck striving to get ahead, small businessmen working 80-hour weeks to build an enterprise.
Donald Trump is one of those people the writer José N Harris was talking about when he wrote, “Those who lie, twist life so that it looks tasty to the lazy, brilliant to the ignorant, and powerful to the weak.”
Never Trump!
Richard Badalamente, Kennewick
This story was originally published September 30, 2016 at 4:06 AM with the headline "Letter: Trump lies and then doubles down, belittling challengers."