Washington - With Donald Trump and the news media unable to agree
even on the weather, the war over truth is on.
In the first few days of his presidency, Trump and his aides have
been accused of spreading outright lies. The response: the
"dishonest" media is out to get him.
Since the weekend, Trump has been embroiled in controversy over
the crowd at his swearing-in, with both he and the White House overstating its
size - and dismissing conflicting
evidence as biased against him.
New York Times fact-checkers called out Trump for claiming the
rain stopped and the weather turned "sunny" after his inaugural
speech - noting that in reality, a light
rain fell throughout his remarks.
The same day, Trump falsely asserted that his well-documented feud
with the US intelligence services was made up by the media.
And two days later, on Monday, he told congressional leaders that
as many as five million people could have voted illegally in November - a claim
backed by no public evidence.
During his campaign, Trump's loose interpretation of truth kept
fact-checkers working around the clock - PolitiFact found 70% of his statements
"mostly" false or worse.
His first steps in the White House have followed a similar
pattern: as news organisations called out
the several falsehoods uttered over the weekend, his aide Kellyanne Conway
defended what she called "alternative facts" - leaving much of
America speechless.
Trump spokesman Sean Spicer, in his first official media briefing
on Monday, claimed that much of the press is opposed to the new president and
itself fudges facts.
He cited one report - which turned out to be inaccurate and was
later corrected - indicating a bust of Martin Luther King Jr. had been removed
from its place in the White House.
"Over and over again there's this constant attempt to
undermine his credibility and the movement that he represents," Spicer
said.
"And it's frustrating for not just him, but I think so many
of us that are trying to work to get this message out. "
Spicer appeared to soften the tone, calling for an improved
relationship with journalists after Trump, on his first day in office, dubbed
them "among the most dishonest human beings on Earth."
Full Orwell
But at next day's briefing, Spicer stood by Trump's
unsubstantiated claims of voter fraud, called out as a "lie" by
leading media including the New York Times.
Spicer told reporters the president "has believed that for a
while based on studies and information he has," without giving evidence.
Trump has previously cited two studies documenting voter
registration errors, neither of which makes any claims about fraudulent voting.
Summing up the view of many stunned observers, Washington Post
media columnist Margaret Sullivan wrote this week that Spicer was sent to
"brazenly lie" from the White House podium.
"We've gone full Orwell," she wrote, drawing a parallel
to the distortion of facts in the dystopian classic "1984" - sales of
which have spiked since the weekend.
In these tussles over facts, some commentators see a deliberate
strategy of delegitimizing the press, in
order to curtail future scrutiny of the new administration.
"His war isn't with the media. Trump lives off media
attention and delights in press coverage. His war is with facts," argued
Vox.com editor-in-chief Ezra Klein.
"The Trump administration is creating a baseline expectation
among its loyalists that they can't trust anything said by the media. The spat
over crowd size is a low-stakes, semi-comic dispute, but the groundwork is
being laid for much more consequential debates over what is, and isn't,
true."
Credibility at stake
Stony Brook University political scientist John Ryan said the new
administration appears to understand that increasingly, "in politics, the
facts do not matter".
Ryan, in a CNBC column, said many people believed unemployment
went up under president Barack Obama when the opposite was true.
"The Trump administration knows this and believes it allows
them to say whatever they want," Ryan said. "Because the facts will
not play much of a role in how the public view his administration."
Some analysts warn, however, that Trump's apparent willingness to
bend facts is eroding his credibility, and could durably undermine trust in the
US government.
"While I am much more concerned about policy than I am about
crowd-size controversies, White House credibility is of paramount
importance," said Andy Wright, a law professor and former White House
staffer under Bill Clinton, writing for the Just Security blog.
"The Trump presidency has already ignited a crisis of
confidence," he said.
"Without a credible White House, our allies cannot rely on
our promises and our adversaries doubt our threats. Everything gets more
dangerous."
