Killing Truth.

It was documented that the Felon-in-Chief told more than 30,000 lies during his first term in office. And during his current term, it seems he lies as often as he breathes. What’s worse is the fact that he has extended his assault on the truth to include the entire government, along with educational institutions, law firms, and media.

Since taking office, he has blocked research funding for universities he considers too liberal under the guise that they have failed to control antisemitism. (For the record, it’s not antisemitic to demonstrate against Israel’s genocide in Gaza.) He and his thuggish White Christian Nationalist followers continue to ban books from public schools and libraries. They have tried to erase any reference to the LBTQ community. And they continue to rewrite African American history and the long-lasting impact of slavery and Jim Crow.

They have criminalized brown and black immigrants, leading to what can only be described as kidnapping by anonymous masked men. The immigrants are then confined to concentration camps with deplorable conditions before being deported – often to countries thousands of miles from their homes.

The regime has denied law firms access to government property and information for representing clients the Dear Leader doesn’t like. It has also denied access to reporters and news organizations for reporting stories he dislikes, no matter how truthful they are. And, increasingly, the Felon-in-Chief has filed multibillion dollar lawsuits against media he feels have wronged him.

For example, he sued the Des Moines Register because he was angry that it published a poll that was unfavorable to Trump before the election. And he sued CNN after it repeatedly used “the big lie” to describe Trump’s repeated false statements that the 2020 election was stolen.

Trump sued ABC after George Stephanopoulos stated that Trump was convicted of rape. (He wasn’t. He was actually convicted of sexual assault and defamation. But the federal judge in the case stated that E. J. Carroll’s claim of rape was “substantially true.”) Although the case against ABC was frivolous, the network eventually capitulated and agreed to a $15 million settlement before trial.

Trump also sued CBS and 60 Minutes over what he believed was an edited response by Kamala Harris during an interview. Never mind that media routinely edit statements for clarity and brevity. But Paramount Global, the owner of CBS, also capitulated to the sum of $16 million over fear that its sale to Skydance Media would be blocked by the Republican-dominated FCC. The network even cancelled Late Night with Stephen Colbert, one of Trump’s most effective and humorous critics.

Trump even blocked the Associated Press from the White House Press Room because it ran a story referring to the Gulf of Mexico, instead of Trump’s preferred moniker: the Gulf of America. His cronies have also taken press credentials away from traditional news gathering organizations and handed them, instead, to more compliant bloggers and new (not news) media.

In the most glaring attack on independent news media, Trump and his MAGA congressional minions defunded PBS and NPR. And most recently, Trump has even sued the conservative-leaning Wall Street Journal over its reporting of Trump’s friendship with a rival sexual predator – Jeffrey Epstein.

All of this seems a calculated attempt to intimidate and blind the media and, in turn, voters.

Not only is Trump completely divorced from the truth. So, too, are most of his appointees and cabinet members. Loyalty is prized above truthfulness and competency. And those who do not follow his lying lead are often quickly dispatched. The latest example is his firing of the Commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics because he didn’t like the jobs numbers the agency reported.

The Felon-in-Chief and his underlings have removed Inspectors General, Whistleblowers and truth tellers from throughout the government. Even the Smithsonian Institution has succumbed to darkness after it was apparently forced to remove all references to Trump’s two impeachments. (The exhibit now lists only Andrew Johnson and Bill Clinton.)

If, as the Washington Post says, democracy dies in darkness, Lady Liberty’s torch is becoming very, very dim.

And Trump is as divorced from his oath to uphold and defend the Constitution as he is from the truth. Thus far, he has governed in direct violation of the 1st, 4th, 6th, 8th and 14th Amendments. In addition, he has talked about violating the 20th. He and his MAGA party have also violated the clause governing the separation of church and state. And he is clearly and continually operating in violation of the emoluments clause, which prohibits any federal officeholder from receiving gifts from foreign states or individuals and specifically bars the president from receiving gifts from the government or states.

In addition to gifts, Trump and his family have received the benefits of billions in investments from foreign governments. This year, he accepted a $40 million aircraft from Qatar and is spending an estimated $1 billion more of taxpayer money to convert it into Air Force One before he leaves office (if he leaves) and donates it to his presidential library.

He has also received tens of millions in personal donations from his MAGA supporters and billionaires. He spent $151.5 million of taxpayer money on golf trips to his own resorts during his first term. And, in his first six months of this term, he has already spent $50 million more. And that doesn’t include the estimated $10 million for his recent trip to Scotland to promote his new golf resort! If he continues to squander our money at this rate, he’ll approach nearly half a billion dollars by the end of the term. This from the man who complained that Obama golfed too much.

Of course, Trump justifies his golf habit by saying he needs time away from the stress of the office. (Apparently, destroying democracy is particularly stressful business.)

CBS’ “60 Minutes” Fails Again!

After its well-publicized failure to report the truth about the attack on our Benghazi consulate, one would expect that CBS, particularly its 60 Minutes crew, would be careful to assure accuracy in future reports.

Yet, this past Sunday, just 10 weeks after its Benghazi debacle, 60 Minutes failed again.

In attempting to uncover government waste on the part of the Obama administration’s clean energy loan program, Leslie Stahl displayed her apparent bias and ignorance of the subject. Under the label “clean tech,” she conflated high-tech companies with clean energy companies. (Not every clean energy alternative is high tech.) She also conflated the failure of venture capital-backed start-ups with the failure of companies receiving federally-backed loans. In doing so, she implied that a majority of loans to clean energy companies were lost. She also implied that clean energy is a fool’s errand.

Further, Stahl failed to provide real context for her story.

She failed to report that when a federally-backed company fails it doesn’t always default on the loans. That’s because the loans are often recovered through the sale of assests. She failed to report the failure rate of federally-backed loans which, according to congressional testimony by the former head of the Department of Energy’s loan guarantee program, is less than 3 percent. She failed to report that the loans to Solyndra began during the Bush administration. She failed to report that even companies that fail often create products and technologies that eventually benefit us all. She failed to report that, according to the Solar Energy Industries Association, 2013 was a huge success. She failed to mention that nine states now get 10 percent or more of their electricity from wind and solar; that wind is now the dominant energy source in Spain; that solar and wind compete head-to-head with coal in places like South Africa.

Stahl also failed to report that approximately three-quarters of all venture capital-backed businesses fail. That’s across all industries. Not just in the clean energy sector. She didn’t recognize the ecological consequences of making fuel from trees (one of the “clean tech” start-ups she covered in her story). She failed to report the ecological consequences of basing our future on oil, most especially tar sands oil. More important, she failed to report the staggering amount of money that the federal government gives to the carbon-based energy sector with no expectation of repayment (estimates range from $14 billion to $52 billion annually).

Stahl suggests that taxpayers should expect more from our government than failures such as Solyndra (which was a superior technology that failed primarily because of our long-standing trade policies with China).

I’d suggest that we should expect better…much better…from Leslie Stahl and 60 Minutes.