Trump-speak for lies -- alternative facts, truthful hyperbole --flummoxes media

From cartoonist Adam Zyglis of The Buffalo News.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

One look at the huge Pompton Lakes story on Page 1 today clearly shows the editors of The Record are fiddling while Washington, D.C., burns.

Completion of Phase 1 of a lake cleanup isn't news outside the small Passaic County community -- especially in view of all of the lies the Trump administration has been peddling since the inauguration on Friday.

Even more troubling is President Trump's attempt to dismantle the Obama administration's clean-energy and clean-water initiatives.

The editorial board in Woodland Park hasn't commented on the lies or the assault on the environment.

But today, OP-Ed Columnist David Leonhardt of The New York Times wrote:

"The Trump administration -- and the president himself -- have shown a shocking disregard for the truth in their first days on the job.

"This disregard puts the media in a tricky spot, because calling out the president of the United States and his staff for untruths will inevitably upset his supporters.

"But the media cannot waver. We cannot use euphemisms for 'false' and 'untrue' when those are the accurate terms."

'Alternative facts'

Trump White House adviser and former campaign manager Kellyanne Conway likely told more lies than the candidate himself, if you can imagine that.

Now, she is labeling the shocking disregard for the truth shown by Sean Spicer, the White House press secretary, as "alternative facts."

They go perfectly with the president's own "truthful hyperbole," including the dark vision in his inaugural speech of "American carnage."

The environment

Trump's "America First Energy Plan" includes reviving the coal industry, which would ensure we'd have to deal with elevated levels of mercury in fish for years to come.

Coal generating plants contaminate water sources with methylmercury, which is absorbed into the body of fish.

Click here for commentary from the Gas2 blog, "America First Energy Plan Puts Americans Last."

Class v. crass

In a Sunday opinion column, editorial writer Bruce Lowry "looks back once more at the class act that was the Obama presidency" (Sunday's 2O).

Lowry doesn't contrast Obama with the crass Trump (stupid, coarse, gross, etc.); his former supermodel wife's nude photos; or the rest of the family, including children from two other wives.

But he does recall Trump's so-called birther lie that Obama was not actually a U.S. citizen, and shouldn't be able to hold the office of president.

Lowry says Trump's charge carried "racial overtones."