Ethics & Religion
Column #2,002
December 24, 2019
Trump, the Liar, Should Be Convicted
By Mike McManus

Donald Trump has made more than 15,000 false or misleading claims since becoming President according to The Washington Post. By December 10, 2019 the President had lied 15,413 times.

In 2017, his first year in office, he made false claims 1,999 times. In 2018 his rate of lying more than doubled to 5,689.

Over the past year, Trump made an average of 32 false or misleading claims a day.

All Presidents lie - but none like Donald Trump.

The House voted last week to impeach President Trump on two grounds. First, that he misused the power of his office by pressuring Ukraine's president to investigate former Vice President Joseph Biden. Trump withheld $391 million voted by Congress to help Ukraine fight the Russian invasion of their country. That lasted for months until a whistleblower exposed Trump's abuse of power.

The second reason Congress impeached the President accused him of obstructing Congress by not allowing anyone from his Administration to meet with Congressional committees, or to respond to Congressional subpoenas.

As Mark Galli, editor of Christianity Today, the evangelical magazine founded by Billy Graham, put it: "I am making a moral judgement that he's morally unfit" to be president.

He wrote an editorial that condemned Trump's "attempt to use his political power to coerce a foreign leader to harass and discredit one of (his) political opponents."

Trump's pattern of lies began his first day in office when he lied about the size of his inauguration crowd that "looked honestly like a million and a half people," adding that "it went all the way back to the Washington Monument." Aerial photos proved him wrong.

Two days later he spent 10 minutes of his meeting with Congressional leaders in which he charged that 3 to 5 million "illegals" voted in the election, costing him the popular vote, in which Hillary Clinton beat him by nearly 3 million votes. The National Association of Secretaries of State, who are mostly Republicans, said it is "not aware of any evidence that supports the voter fraud claims made by Presiden Trump...All available evidence suggests that the 2016 election was not tainted by fraud or mistake."

On Jan. 25, Trump claimed, "You have people who are registered who are dead, who are illegals in two states," Trump told ABC's David Muir. "You have people registered in New York and New Jersey. They voted twice." There is absolutely no evidence of his charge.

Trump also claimed to Muir that "Two people were shot and killed" during Obama's Farewell Address. "They weren't killed at his speech. But they were shot in the City of Chicago during his speech." Chicago Police said no one was killed, though there were 5 non-fatal shootings that day.

A day later the President claimed that Philadelphia's murder rate has been "terribly increasing." In fact, Philadelphia's murder rate fell by 19% in five years and 41% over ten years.
Why lie about something so easily proven wrong?

After only a month as President, Trump told a group of U.S. sheriffs that the U.S. murder rate is the highest it's been in "45 to 47 years." In fact, the American murder rate is close to an all-time low. Law enforcement experts say Trump is so far from the fact, it is ludicrous.

The murder rate was 5 homicides per 100,000 people in 2015, down from a peak in 1980 of 10.2 per 100,000. That's about a 50% drop in the murder rate in 35 years.

I first called for the impeachment of Donald Trump June 15, 2017. The Maryland and Washington D.C. Attorneys General filed a lawsuit accusing the President of violating anti-corruption laws through his ownership of companies that have accepted millions of dollars from foreign governments.

The Constitution prohibits a U.S. office holder from accepting "any present Emolument...from any King, Prince or foreign State."

The lawsuit charges that the President's global business empire "renders him deeply enmeshed with a legion of foreign and domestic government actors, violates the Constitution and calls into question the rule of law and the integrity of the country's political system."

Trump replied that he had turned over the management of his business to his sons, and that he would donate any profits to the Treasury.

Another lie. He has not donated any profits.

Trump has now been impeached.

He should be convicted by the Senate.
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Copyright (c) 2019 Michael J. McManus, a syndicated columnist and past president of Marriage Savers. To read past columns, go to www.ethicsandreligion.com. Hit Search for any topic.