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Comment by kbenson | Hacker News Reader

In one respect, the gaffe is insignificant to current events. In another, it's vastly more important, because while small it erodes the underpinnings of the system by which we actually disseminate information.

It's like having to choose between being upset about the person that mugged you for $500 on the street, or the bank that surreptitiously added 0.05% APR or the loan you just got for your house. One feels more important in the moment, but the other has much farther reaching implications, not just to your pocketbook, but as to whether you can trust anything about that institution going forward.

If this is the beginning of a new trend for the Whitehouse where nothing presented can be trusted, and it continues through future presidencies, I can definitely tell you which I think will be more important in 20 years.

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The cynical among us have been saying that nothing presented by the White house (and any other government institutions) can be trusted at face value for years. I guess now is the time where everyone becomes a cynic.

But is that such a bad thing?

They say access journalism is dead, but access journalism is just repeating stuff said by people with power. Making them accountable is a good thing.

Trump may have unintentionally restored investigative journalism...

>> Trump may have unintentionally restored investigative journalism...

This can happen if they can find a way to monetize text that costs 100x more to produce and has 100x less engagement than clickbait.

If there's 10000 times less competition in investigative journalism than in clickbaiting those numbers add up to being profitable

Maybe people will actually pay for something that isn't trash.

(Or, maybe not, who knows.)

> I guess now is the time where everyone becomes a cynic.

For a transition of normative systems it seems that it is required that at some point people "don't believe in anything" anymore.

> But is that such a bad thing?

Yes. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaslighting

Your point may be valid, but I think the current (up until very recently, anyway) situation is just as bad.

A new trend?

You think Trump is inventing Whitehouse lies, right before our eyes? Politicians have a looooong history of lying, big lies that get peole killed ("Iraq WMDs are a slam dunk!") . Where have you been?

Those lies were not immediately able to be proven wrong. This is different because not only did they lie about something that could be checked but the continued to lie even after being called out on it. Further the president repeated the lie and continues to repeat the lie. O bet both George W. Bush and Tony Blair would agree that there were no WMDs in Iraq if you asked them today, if you also Trump, today or in 10 years, about the turnout for his inauguration he would repeat the same lies.

Those lies were not immediately able to be proven wrong.

But there was serious doubt even if it did not constitute a clear proof. And doesn't this actually make matters worse? An obvious lie about something without much if any consequences versus a somewhat convincing lie about something that affected the lives of millions? To me the former one seems more like a stupid thing to do, the later one seems ruthless, evil or what ever you want to call it.

> O bet both George W. Bush and Tony Blair would agree that there were no WMDs in Iraq if you asked them today, if you also Trump, today or in 10 years, about the turnout for his inauguration he would repeat the same lies.

You can use the Obama birth certificate turn around as counter point and that was definitely less than 10 years.

Right. That and the birth certificate thing wasn't a "lie", it was ignorant, dog whistle politicking.

Telling people you are going to strengthen whistle blowing laws to empower workers, then prosecuting a record number of people under the Espionage act is closer to a damaging lie.

No, I don't think you can since it's entirely possible Trump will simply declare he never backtracked and that he still has doubts or evidence Obama wasn't legitimate. He's repeatedly denied saying things _he is on video or twitter_ saying. He can simply make up any facts whenever he wants because no matter the evidence to the contrary, what he says is true simply because he's said it.

> No, I don't think you can since it's entirely possible Trump will simply declare he never backtracked and that he still has doubts or evidence Obama wasn't legitimate. He's repeatedly denied saying things _he is on video or twitter_ saying. He can simply make up any facts whenever he wants because no matter the evidence to the contrary, what he says is true simply because he's said it.

President Obama is on video, audio, Twitter, and just about every other form of media saying things that subsequently were proven false. A brazen example of that is the infamous line, "If you like your plan you can keep your plan." which he knew to be false (and Ezekiel Emanuel, architect of much of the ACA had apparently laughed at as impossible).

I don't mean to single out President Obama as it's really all Presidents, or more generally politicians, that do it. It's not unique to Trump, didn't start with him, nor will it end with him.

All politicians lie, what's seemingly different about Trump is the scope and frequency of those lies, and his refusal to admit he even said them given evidence.

Just the refusal to admit them would be bad enough, but since he's gotten away with it just about every time, it shows a worrying trend of there being no accountability. Combined with the frequency, the problem is just multiplied.

I find a politician that can't seem to be held accountable for his actions and that trades on this for more political power very troubling.

So it's more acceptable for politicians to admit to their lies at a later date, that to stick to them? Hmm...

Is that what I said?

> if you also Trump, today or in 10 years, about the turnout for his inauguration he would repeat the same lies.

I bet good money he'll be saying billions of people watched his inauguration by then.

Why Trump's Staff Is Lying (https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-01-23/why-trump...)

I choose my words carefully. I even emphasized specific words to attempt to make my point more clear. Then you ignored all that.

I wasn't trying to imply that the White House could be trusted in all things, but that there was some level of truth you could probably assume, especially about things that were already known or weren't worth lying about. What we have now is an example of disputing obvious facts, and over something inconsequential, as issues the White House responds to about go. This is clearly different than what we could expect before, even if we couldn't always expect for an entirely honest answer before.

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