Truth Matters

By Dr. E. Faye Williams, Esq.
TriceEdneyWire.com Columnist

Nearly everyday we hear some version of the statement that truth matters, but does it really? Day after day, we hear about the number of times Donald Trump has told yet another lie. When we heard he had made over 18,000 false or misleading claims many of us just said, “I don’t see where it matters because he continues to do so daily without consequences. He’s still the president!” How he got to be president is still a mystery. Worse yet, there’re a lot of people who say they will vote for him again! They excuse or ignore every lie he tells.

It’s painful to see reporters having to listen to lie after lie in those daily briefings. If they try to question him about his obvious lies, Trump shuts them up without ever hearing their questions. I applaud the reporters who come back and ask the same question a colleague has tried to ask. Trump cuts them off, too, and argues with them before the question is finished. I admire the few who get Trump’s attention, then yield their time to the colleague who has just been verbally brutalized by Trump.

I wonder, partly in Trump’s words, “What do the reporters have to lose?” by not attending his rude performances day after day? Why don’t they form a group where only one person shows up for Trump’s performances, then shares the misinformation with others so that everyone does not have to take Trump’s verbal abuse daily?

It was James Baldwin who said, “Ignorance, allied with power, is the most ferocious enemy justice can have….” I know that Trump thinks he’s the smartest person in the world who has done phenomenal things that no one else has ever done, but do we have to hear about it day after day? If no one shows up for his daily insulting performances, maybe we could limit the number of lies he tells.

It’s recently been said that he wants to get a two-hour radio program. Apparently, he thinks he’s saying brilliant things that people want to hear. If he did get such a program, we sure don’t have to listen. If we do, obviously we’re part of his enablers.

We’re being told that things will never be the same after this coronavirus is over. If Trump is still president after the next election then all of us need to take a good look at ourselves and ask why we’re still putting up with him?

We’re in the midst of the worst disaster we’ve faced in our lifetime; yet, many of us are feeling there’s nothing we can do to ensure that we never have another narcissistic President who drags us down and drains our energy listening to the hateful, untrue things he pushes out from his government housing at 1600 that we taxpayers pay for.

He says we have the best economy in the world, probably the best economy in the history of the world! If that’s true, why do we still have so many poor people, so many people without adequate housing, without health care, so many who don’t have funds to get a college degree?

Wasn’t it he that led millions of our people to believe the virus was a hoax, that everything was under control, and this would be gone in a few days? Why should we believe anything he says? Now, that we’re under the control of the coronavirus, isn’t it time for us to look for new leaders who have a history of telling the truth, and letting us know they’re working for us — not just for their ego and their personal benefit? If truth matters, there must be consequences for lying.

This article originally published in the April 27, 2020 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.