“There ain't nothin' more powerful than the odor of mendacity,” Big Daddy tells son Brick in the 1958 movie classic, “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.”
Mendacity is defined as “a tendency to lie,” and no better word defines the relentless liberal campaign against Donald Trump over the last nine years.
What's your candidate for the biggest whopper thrown up (an apt choice of words) against Trump over the last nine years? Here are a few of mine.
As lies go, nothing compares to Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas saying that “the border is secure.” He said it many times, apparently having convinced himself that 10 million undocumented people walking across our southern border constitutes security.
This in the face of countless videos of hoards of people crossing the border, skyrocketing drug and human trafficking, and young girls savagely murdered by illegal immigrants who should have been stopped at the border.
Some say the number is more like 20 million, but Mayorkas continued to peddle his blue-ribbon whopper.
There's plenty of competition, however, for the biggest lie.
Recall that Oprah Winfrey told us if we didn't vote for Kamala Harris, it could be the last time we ever get to vote in an election. Hoo-boy, what a knee-slapper that was. Trump was president for four years, left office at the end of his term, and last I looked we're still voting in elections.
Oprah fed Trump Derangement Syndrome, and her company got paid $2.5 million for the effort. (Great work, if you can get it.)
Then there's the big lie that Trump favors a nationwide ban on abortion, even though he has said many times that he opposes such a ban, and the issue should be left to the states.
How about President Biden claiming Trump said there were “good people on both sides” of the violence in Charlottesville? Trump was talking about tearing down Civil War statues, and there were good people on either side of that debate, not the violence. (I'm against tearing down statues, and I consider myself “good people.”)
The famous quote about this is that, “A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on.” (Commonly attributed to Winston Churchill, or maybe Jonathan Swift, or FDR's Secretary of State Cordell Hull.) People who want to believe a lie will eagerly do so.
Let's continue our stroll down Whopper Lane.
Here's a big, fat lie that many of us witnessed on television. In an interview, Sean Hannity asked Trump if he wants to be a dictator, as claimed by Democrats. Trump said he only wants to be a dictator “for one day,” and on two issues, border security and “drill, baby, drill.”
Democrats took that ball and ran with it, claiming that Trump “said himself that he wants to be a dictator,” and not saying only for one day, and only on two issues.
I cussed Hannity for asking that question every time I heard a Democrat say Trump wants to be a dictator “in his own words.” You had to know what hysteria-prone Democrats would turn that into.
Then there's the claim that Trump once referred to fallen American soldiers as “suckers” and “losers,” attributed to Gen. John Kelly, his chief of staff at the time. But nobody else heard Trump say what Kelly says he heard, including Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, and even devout Trump critic John Bolton, who were both there at the time.
Try as they might, fact checkers couldn't confirm that juicy claim, and Trump vehemently denied it. But that didn't stop Joe Biden from repeating it as gospel in his Trump-hating diatribes.
And it was lapped up by those who love hating Trump.
Don't forget the Morning Joe claims that Trump is a Nazi, a fascist, Adolph Hitler, and in cahoots with Russia, even though we all witnessed his first term as president, and saw no such thing.
When the great Merle Haggard appeared in Cheyenne a few years back, in visibly frail health, he noted that he was in his “Golden Years.”
“Friends,” he told the crowd, “we've been lied to.”
I feel that same about the Epic Whoppers of Election 2024.
Dave Simpson can be reached at: DaveSimpson145@hotmail.com
