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Comment by aaron-lebo | Hacker News Reader

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact-checker/wp/2016/05/...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8BfNqhV5hg4

You asked.

If you watch that with no bias for or against Clinton, it's hard to see that as anything other than a series of lies that she kept repeating well after she was called out on them.

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That one lie, which she apologized for, doesn't compare to the constant lying that Trump engages in. And Trump almost never apologizes or admits that he lies. There is not much equivalence in my mind between the lying that Hillary Clinton or even most other politicians make when compared to Trump. That's how I see Elizabeth Holmes from Theranos. I'm just astounded by Holmes' and Trump's audacity to constantly spout such shameless and easily disproven lies. They are pathological liars. I can't say that about too many other people, and Hillary Clinton doesn't belong in the same class as Trump.

Whether the email issue mattered or not, she also lied repeatedly about that: about the number of emails, the number of devices, etc.

I can take this further afield and show you lie after recorded lie of hers, but it's not much use. I suspect they and many politicians are pathological liars, some just have more tact.

EDIT: due to downvotes I'll respond to you here

Uh, Trump's a liar, obviously. You can start with his false memories about of 9/11 and continue onward. He's an obvious pathological liar to me, but to so is Clinton. The only way people see otherwise is due to bias.

The fact that criticism of an obviously horrible candidate leads people to assume you support another horrible politician is to me a sign of how bad politics are these days (I guess they have always been this way, we're just aware of the happenings as they happen).

I don't think you can measure levels of dishonesty. When it is known, there is true and false and nothing in between. Making excuses for the lies of politicians is a sure race to the bottom.

It's strange to me to see Hillary Clinton compared to Trump as equivalent in terms of honesty. I don't buy that. In fact, I would rate Trump and people like Elizabeth Holmes as being far more dishonest than your everyday politician or average person. I tend to think of them as being pathological liars, and I don't put Clinton or most other politicians in the same league as Trump. Maybe I shouldn't have used Trump as an example, even though I think he's the clearest example today, because of the incredibly divisive and polarizing elections we've experienced. Some people can't seem to see or think straight when it comes to Trump or Clinton.

I'm sure you can show me Clinton's lies, but I have to wonder if you can do the same with Trump. And I have to wonder if you even think Trump is more honest than Clinton.

Right, there are literally dozens of examples of Trump in the last twelve months where he has said something, and not something vague, but specific, concrete statements, recorded on video, and in some cases not 24 hours later saying "I didn't say that. That's a lie. I never said that."

This is way off topic at this point, but I would say lying to make yourself look better (and it was a lie) is fundamentally different from defrauding people with a product that doesn't work/doesn't exist.

They're both bad, but they're not directly comparable.

That's fair, though you could also say that a politician's product is their persona and ability to lead. Making up stuff about your past to appeal to people is defrauding them with something that doesn't work/exist as advertised.

It also makes one wonder if someone is willing to lie about something so small and easily debunked, what else have they lied about?

They're on the same spectrum, no doubt. One is more indirect and (usually) smaller, though if we found out a politician had lied about very serious credentials it could indeed cause a lot of harm.

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