The president flunks Cicero’s “fake news” test badly. The Roman philosopher says it is dishonorable to stumble ignorantly when it comes to the facts and to be deceived. Sadly, Trump has built a reputation on disinformation. Before he was elected, he was a regular booster of Alex Jones, the conspiracy theorist behind the website Infowars. “Your reputation is amazing,” Trump affectionately told Jones in one appearance on his show. This, of course, is the same Alex Jones who suggested that the Sandy Hook elementary school shooting was faked and that the Apollo 11 moon landing never happened.
Trump was also one of the most visible adherents of “birtherism,” perpetuating (false) suspicion that Barack Obama was not born in America and fearmongering that he’d lied about his religion. “He doesn’t have a birth certificate,” Trump told Laura Ingraham in a 2011 interview, “or if he does, there’s something on that certificate that is very bad for him. Now, somebody told me—and I have no idea if this is bad for him or not, but perhaps it would be—that where it says ‘religion,’ it might have ‘Muslim.’ And if you’re a Muslim, you don’t change your religion, by the way.”
Among many other conspiracy theories, Trump suggested without evidence that Senator Ted Cruz’s dad was involved in the Kennedy assassination, that Justice Antonin Scalia may have been murdered, that MSNBC host Joe Scarborough might have been involved in a former intern’s death, that a former Clinton advisor’s suicide could have been something more nefarious, that Muslim Americans near New York City celebrated in the streets after 9/11, that vaccines cause autism, and more. External observers can barely keep these lists of his claims updated. Internal observers are no better off. We wonder, does he actually believe these conspiracies? Does he just say this stuff to get attention? I can’t get into his head, but my guess is a little bit of both.
Serious people throughout the White House cringe when they hear him raise these subjects. Trump will wrap his arms around bogus claims like they are old friends, and he doesn’t care if the person spewing them is a fraud, as long as their words serve whatever purpose Trump has in mind at the moment. One of his favorite sources for news analysis is Lou Dobbs, a once-respected Fox host whose late-night show is now riddled with conspiracy theories and wild speculation about current events. The president goes to bed with Lou’s ideas floating in his mind, whether it’s conjecture about liberal billionaire George Soros or ideas for new Justice Department investigations. We know this because he regularly brings Lou’s ideas into the Oval Office the next morning, demanding they be implemented the way Lou said they should be. I can’t think of another elected leader in this country who is so easily lured in by obvious carnival barkers.
The president spreads false claims almost daily. He is the nation’s most prominent re-tweeter of “fake news” while simultaneously being its biggest critic. In fairness, every president gets facts wrong once in a while. The difference is that those presidents seemed to care when they misspoke. They didn’t recite sham information every day as a matter of course without regard for the consequences. Yet after making a demonstrably untrue statement, the president displays zero remorse that he has done so. He’s comfortable being a huckster of half-truths.
Both his appointees and the public hear misleading statements from the president so often that we’ve become desensitized to them, from an early claim that his inauguration was the largest-attended in history (this was easily debunked) to his insistence that the special counsel’s report exonerates him (it explicitly does not). We will explore the president’s tenuous relationship with the truth in more detail. For now, though, we can safely say that Trump doesn’t meet Cicero’s standard for someone who reveres and seeks the truth, someone who isn’t easily deceived or doesn’t spread misinformation.
A wise man he is not.
The President’s Sense of Justice
When I refer to “justice,” it’s not about law and order. Cicero defined the concept as a way of characterizing how an individual treats others. Does the person maintain good fellowship with other people? Does he or she give everyone what they deserve? And does the individual keep faith in contracts and promises? These are the qualities of a “just” person. Cicero adds to the mix that this type of person also displays “beneficence and liberality,” i.e., they are kind and generous.
Donald Trump certainly thinks a lot about justice. So much so, in fact, that the president has tweeted about something being “fair” or “unfair” nearly two hundred times since taking office. His concern tends to be about whether he is being treated fairly personally. “Nothing funny about tired Saturday Night Live on Fake News NBC!” he tweeted after the show mocked a White House press conference in February 2019. “Question is, how do the Networks get away with these total Republican hit jobs without retribution? Likewise for many other shows? Very unfair and should be looked into. This is the real Collusion!” The president was insinuating that television networks needed to be investigated and punished for poking fun at him. Thankfully no one was dumb enough to follow up with the Federal Communications Commission to put them on the case.
He spends a lot of time talking to staff about perceived injustices. Trump will complain about his coverage, his critics, and anything else that he believes is unfair. Then he will send White House aides on an endless quest to “fix it.” The president might want an aide to get on the phone to scold a television commentator who’s been disagreeing with him or to tell a foreign leader that we’re “done” dealing with their country because Trump doesn’t like what they’ve said about a White House policy. It’s gotten so tiring that aides will acknowledge the gripe and pledge to remedy it, while letting it drop to the very bottom of (or off) their to-do lists because the problem is impossible to fix, pointless to address, or requires a counterproductive solution.
No venue is off limits for his complaints of injustice. Shortly after assuming the duties of commander in chief, Trump traveled to Central Intelligence Agency headquarters to speak to America’s covert workforce. His remarks were bookended with complaints about unfair news coverage. “As you know, I have a running war with the media,” he told the audience. “They are the most dishonest human beings on Earth.” All of us watching it winced. The president was making his comments in the most inappropriate setting, not just because he was at the CIA, but because he was standing in front of the agency’s memorial wall for fallen officers. President Trump did the same four months later in front of hundreds of US Coast Guard Academy cadets, turning part of their commencement ceremony into a rant about the press. “Look at the way I’ve been treated lately!” he remarked, going off script and shaking his head. “No politician in history—and I say this with great surety—has been treated worse or more unfairly.”