Team Trump's Trouble With the Truth Runs So Much Deeper Than Kellyanne Conway's ‘honest Mistake'

Mistakes happen. The press makes them. Government makes them. I make them, too, and so do you. What's often more revealing about character, however, is what comes after the error is brought to light. And on that score, the two people that Americans are paying to speak on behalf of their president - presidential adviser Kellyanne Conway and press secretary Sean Spicer - have revealed themselves to be fundamentally ill-suited for the job. They aren't honest, which is a problem only because if they aren't honest, they make our president dishonest. Worse still, when they speak for the president, they are often speaking for the country - and in that way they can make liars of us all. On Thursday night, Conway was on Hardball with Chris Matthews. She defended Trump's controversial travel ban on seven Muslim-majority nations, including Iraq. She seemed to say that folks wouldn't be so upset about it if the press hadn't kept Americans in the dark about the "Bowling Green massacre" committed by two Iraqis in 2011. Except as she knew perfectly well, the press covered the 2011 events she was referring to with vigor. They weren't much discussed, however, in relationship to Trump's order because there was no massacre in Bowling Green. No attack of any kind there. Not even a stubbed-toe. What there had been was the arrests of two Iraqis who admitted that they had been planning to send weapons and money to the Middle East for use there by terrorists fighting U.S. soldiers. The two also admitted that previously, while living in Iraq, they had used IEDs against our soldiers. (Here are the details from the FBI.) These men -- clearly our enemies -- were sentenced to 40 years in federal prison and to a life term, respectively.  Continue reading...