A Slip of the Tongue (Gwen Moritz Editor’s Note)

I was relieved to learn that Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation did not establish that members of the Trump campaign conspired with the Russian government’s parallel effort to promote Donald Trump.

The investigation wasn’t perfect — some emails had been deleted irretrievably and several affiliates of the Trump campaign told lies that “materially impaired” the investigation. Still, the Mueller Report persuades me that Russian interference was not a joint venture with the campaign.

Instead, it was something incrementally less despicable: criminal activity against Americans and our democracy by a hostile foreign government that Trump’s campaign knew about and welcomed. (Until he won, that is. After that surprising outcome, Trump and his supporters became unshakably convinced that not a single voter was influenced by the hacking and leaking that, according to Mueller, “the Campaign expected it would benefit electorally from.”)

What Mueller’s investigation did confirm is that lying is as fundamental to Trump’s entourage as it is to Trump himself. I’m not sure there’s ever been a completely honest and forthright politician, but this one started his political career by promoting the racist “birther” lie about Barack Obama’s citizenship and his presidency with a transparent lie about the turnout for his inauguration.

The Mueller Report takes us inside a culture saturated with mendacity. “The Trump Campaign lied,” “Manafort lied,” “Papadopoulos lied,” “Flynn lied …”

Trump asked White House Counsel Don McGahn to issue a false denial (that is, to lie) when the news leaked out that Trump had told McGahn to have Mueller fired. Trump himself lied when he dismissed the accurate news report as “Fake news, folks. Fake news. A typical New York Times fake story.” (Remember: When Trump says something is “fake news,” there’s an excellent chance that he is lying about an accurate report.)

A most disappointing lie recounted in the Mueller Report was told by White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders, a graduate of Ouachita Baptist University, where bearing false witness presumably is still one of the Big Ten.

After the president fired FBI Director James Comey — the reason varied from day to day — Sanders told the American people who pay her salary that “the rank and file of the FBI had lost confidence in their director” and said the White House had “heard from countless members of the FBI” who did not support Comey.

But when asked about those statements by the Special Counsel’s team, when to lie would be a felony, Sanders said that her reference to “countless members of the FBI” was a “slip of the tongue.” Her statement about rank-and-file agents was, she said, made “in the heat of the moment that was not founded on anything.”

Lying about the FBI and defaming a career public servant came so easily that it just slipped out. (Remember that too.)

When the subject of Donald Trump’s dishonesty comes up, die-hard defenders invariably point out that Barack Obama told PolitiFact’s “Lie of the Year” for 2013 when he repeatedly said, “If you like your health care plan, you can keep it.”

But despite such demonstrated concern for both honesty and fairness, they never seem to remember that Trump has already earned two Lie of the Year honors. The first wasn’t for just a single bold lie. It was for a portfolio of lies told during 2015, before the GOP rewarded his character with its nomination.

The second, the Lie of the Year for 2017, was Trump’s insistence that Russian election interference was “a made-up story,” “fake news” and “a hoax” despite both classified and public reports to the contrary from U.S. intelligence agencies.

Mueller’s confirmation of the Russian crimes underscores the fact that Vladimir Putin — whose government “perceived it would benefit from a Trump presidency,” according to the report — respected the man he sought to get elected so much that he lied to his face in Helsinki last summer.

Putin assured Trump that Russia had not interfered in our 2016 elections — and Trump accepted that lie from the Russian president and former KGB officer. By doing so, he continued his Lie of the Year rejection of U.S. intelligence agents and undermined Mueller’s criminal indictments of more than two dozen Russian hackers and propagandists.

“President Putin says it’s not Russia. I don’t see any reason why it would be,” Trump shrugged. Days later, after kneecapping Americans in solidarity with Putin became a political liability, Trump claimed he accidentally left out the word “not” — as in, “I don’t see any reason why it would not be” Russia. Which could be a lie, and, considering the source, I don’t see any reason why it would not be.

Email Gwen Moritz, editor of Arkansas Business, at GMoritz@ABPG.com and follow her on Twitter at @gwenmoritz.