NOAA’s weird, unattributed statement is not being well received.

The Post’s Greg Sargent:

It’s not just Sharpie-gate. This is part of a broader pattern. I count at least seven glaring examples in which government officials have wheeled into action in an effort to make Trump’s lies, errors and obsessions into truths.

He wrote it up at the Post:

Again and again, government officials have wheeled into action in an effort to make Trump’s lies, errors and obsessions into truths, in some cases issuing “official” information explicitly shaped or doctored to do so.

He counts at least seven times this has happened. It started on day one, with the Crowd Size issue. He made Sean Spicer tell brazen lies, … Read the rest

Headlines can be funny. Headline in the Post:

Trump claims there’s a 10-foot wall around the Obamas’ D.C. home. Neighbors say there’s not.

Immediately below the headline there’s a photo of the house which clearly shows there’s no 10-foot wall around it. The “Neighbors say” is otiose when we can see for ourselves that there’s not.

Anyway.

In one of his most recent arguments for a southern border wall, President Trump on Sunday falsely claimed that the Washington home of former president Barack Obama and Michelle Obama is surrounded by a 10-foot wall.

President and Mrs. Obama built/has a ten foot Wall around their D.C. mansion/compound. I agree, totally necessary for their safety and security. The U.S. needs the

Daniel Dale of the Toronto Star is tracking Trump’s serial lies about Matt Whitaker.

In one of his occasional did-a-lawyer-draft-this-tweet? tweets, Trump has gone from "I don't know Matt Whitaker" to "no social contact." pic.twitter.com/1airnpnicY

— Daniel Dale (@ddale8) November 10, 2018

Fact check: The White House pressured Sessions to make Whitaker his chief of staff. https://t.co/NfercUDLwz

— Michael S. Schmidt (@nytmike) November 10, 2018

I'd thought Trump's argument that Mueller hasn't been Senate-confirmed was just very misleading, since special counsels don't need confirmation, but it's much worse: he argued Whitaker was Senate-confirmed in the past, 2004, but Mueller wasn't. Mueller was confirmed 98-0 in 2001. pic.twitter.com/3Fa6SbjsBj

— Daniel Dale (@ddale8) November 10, 2018

… Read the rest

This is making me laugh. Trump has fake covers of Time magazine with none other than Donald Trump himself hanging in some of his golf clubs. Fake ones. Fake.

The framed copy of Time Magazine was hung up in at least five of President Trump’s clubs, from South Florida to Scotland. Filling the entire cover was a photo of Donald Trump.

“Donald Trump: The ‘Apprentice’ is a television smash!” the big headline said. Above the Time nameplate, there was another headline in all caps: “TRUMP IS HITTING ON ALL FRONTS . . . EVEN TV!”

This cover — dated March 1, 2009 — looks like an impressive memento from Trump’s pre-presidential career. To club members eating lunch, or golfers waiting

Oh dear, poor Lying Don, another harsh blow. 9th Circuit says a big no to Don’s Excellent Travel Ban.

Another federal court has ruled against President Donald Trump’s revised executive order limiting travel from six predominately Muslim countries — and like other courts, used his tweets against him.

The ruling from a three-judge panel of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals is yet another stinging loss from a court that similarly refused to reinstate Trump’s original executive order on travel in February.

“We conclude that the President, in issuing the Executive Order, exceeded the scope of the authority delegated to him by Congress,” the three judges, all appointed by President Bill Clinton, wrote. “(I)mmigration, even for the President, is not

Amber Phillips notes there’s this pattern President Liar has of throwing out criminal accusations whenever the heat gets too close to his bum.

We know that James B. Comey is a leaker. It’s doubtful that he’s a criminal; legal experts have said that even though the former FBI director shared his memos of conversations with President Trump with the media, if the information wasn’t classified, that probably wasn’t a crime.

Do we know that Comey is a leaker? I don’t feel as if I know that. He shared his own notes with a friend with a request to read portions to the Times. The notes were typed on a fed machine on fed time, true, but is that by itself … Read the rest

So what might happen next? Don could fall a few more flights.

but how much worse could this get? The chatter on the Sunday shows hinted at where we may be headed. Here are a few things to watch for:

The tapes Trump hinted at turn out not to exist. On ABC’s “This Week,” Jay Sekulow, a member of Trump’s legal team, said Trump will make a decision very soon on whether to release the tapes he may have made of his conversations with then-FBI Director James B. Comey.  After the news broke that Trump may have demanded a “loyalty” pledge from Comey, the president tweeted that Comey had better hope he doesn’t have tapes of their conversations. Trump

Clapper on the other hand has flatly denied it. He says he would have known if it had happened and it didn’t happen. President Liar is lying.

Speaking on NBC News on Sunday morning, former director of national intelligence James R. Clapper Jr., who served in that post in the Obama administration, denied that a wiretap was authorized against Trump or his campaign during his tenure.

“There was no such wiretap activity mounted against the president-elect at the time as a candidate or against his campaign,” Clapper said on “Meet the Press.”

He added that he would “absolutely” have been informed if the FBI had sought or received a warrant to wiretap Trump or his campaign.

“I can deny

Phil Plait on Trump’s censorship of the science agencies:

Welcome to our new, terrifying reality: According to reports, President Donald Trump’s administration has ordered a media blackout of people who work at the Environmental Protection Agency and the United States Department of Agriculture.

He adds that he wants to be careful, and that this could be just a transitional move while the new administration gets sorted.

This may be true. BuzzFeed and the Associated Press, however, obtained internal emails from the EPA and USDA that indicate the new administration is gagging people at the two government agencies, forbidding them [to tweet], going on any social media, or issuing press releases about their science. The only news they are allowed

Yesterday Trump met with Congressional boffins, and he actually told them that illegal voters cost him the popular vote. That’s a fake news alternative facts lie.

Days after being sworn in, President Trump insisted to congressional leaders invited to a reception at the White House that he would have won the popular vote had it not been for millions of illegal votes, according to people familiar with the meeting.

Trump has repeatedly claimed, without evidence, that widespread voter fraud caused him to lose the popular vote to Hillary Clinton, even while he clinched the presidency with an electoral college victory.

Two people familiar with the meeting said Trump spent about 10 minutes at the start of the bipartisan gathering

Greg Sargent at the Washington Post takes an in-depth look at Trump’s persistent lying. He cites the tweets in which Trump says he never mocked the reporter he did mock.

Here Trump is telling two lies about a third lie. A quick review: Trump’s mockery of a disabled reporter came after he claimed “thousands and thousands” of Muslims living in America celebrated 9/11. Kovaleski had written an article just after 9/11 that claimed law enforcement “detained and questioned a number of people who were allegedly seen celebrating the attacks.” Under fire for his falsehood about celebratory Muslims, Trump cited that article to push back, even though an “alleged” “number” is hardly proof of “thousands.” In response to that, the

One for the Strange Bedfellows file: Trump and Assange.

President-elect Donald Trump has backed Wikileaks founder Julian Assange in casting doubt on intelligence alleging Russian meddling in the US election.

Mr Assange said Russia was not the source for the site’s mass leak of emails from the Democratic Party.

Mr Trump has now backed that view in a tweet. He wrote: “Assange… said Russians did not give him the info!”

The president-elect has repeatedly refused to accept the conclusions of the US intelligence community.

Based on what? Nothing. Just his wishes. He doesn’t want it to be the case that Russia hacked DNC emails and helped sabotage Clinton, therefore he asserts that it’s not the case. He is Important, … Read the rest

The big meal on the news media plate is how to deal with a president who tells shameless brazen lies all the time. They’re used to dealing with presidents (and members of Congress and similar) who conceal and obfuscate and dance around the truth, but not ones who just tell obvious lies many times every day, including on Twitter. They’re struggling.

Donald Trump is once again claiming credit for beating back the scourge of outsourcing, this time insisting that he is the reason that Sprint has announced plans to move thousands of jobs back to America from other countries.

“Because of what’s happening, and the spirit and the hope, I was just called by the head people at Sprint,

Originally a comment by Josh Spokes on More lies.

I realize this is probably obvious to many, but I want to point out another way in which he’s not only lying but doesn’t even know how to lie convincingly about this.

I’m the executive at a nonprofit charity. The kind with the IRS tax designation 501(c)(3). This is this the kind of charity where a donor can deduct the contribution from her taxes. Think the Red Cross, your local food pantry, animal shelter, educational nonprofit. Also the same designation as charities like those run by Trump or Hillary Clinton. It’s all the same beast for tax purposes:

1. No charity in the world sends 100 percent of its money … Read the rest

Trump’s been telling porkies again, or still – these about his charitable donations. It’s the familiar pattern: he brags about how great he is, reporters ask questions, it turns out he was telling lies.

Even the most unsparing critic of the news media cannot deny the tremendous effort put forth by Washington Post reporter David A. Fahrenthold as he spent months doggedly trying to document all of Donald Trump’s donations to charity. The task wasn’t easy—the candidate refused to release his tax returns—so Fahrenthold probed records going back decades, repeatedly questioned the Trump campaign, and contacted more than 400 nonprofit organizations while showing his work.

They show us a page from his notes – a list of nonprofits … Read the rest

The Times editorial board has a think piece on what to do about Trump’s relentless lying. They use that word a lot. As I mentioned a week or two ago, newspapers don’t do that lightly – they don’t do it at all unless they’re very sure they can back it up. This piece treats Trump’s lying as not even in doubt.

Mind you, they start with an odd claim.

Donald Trump understood at least one thing better than almost everybody watching the 2016 election: The breakdown of a shared public reality built upon widely accepted facts represented not a hazard, but an opportunity.

The institutions that once generated and reaffirmed that shared reality — including the church, the government,

The New York Times yesterday pointed out Michael Flynn’s fondness for conspiracy theories and fake news.

For Lt. Gen. Michael T. Flynn, who is President-elect Donald J. Trump’s choice for national security adviser, pushing conspiracy theories about Hillary Clinton is a family affair: Both he and his son, Michael G. Flynn, have used social media to spread fake news stories linking Mrs. Clinton to underage sex rings and other serious crimes, backed by no evidence.

The Twitter habits of both men are attracting renewed attention after a man fired a rifle on Sunday inside Comet Ping Pong, a Washington pizza restaurant that was the subject of false stories during the campaign tying it and the Clinton campaign

Rex Huppke at the Chicago Tribune also called Trump a liar.

On Sunday, the man who will soon lead this country tweeted a lie — a big, fiery one. It read: “In addition to winning the Electoral College in a landslide, I won the popular vote if you deduct the millions of people who voted illegally.”

That statement is based on nothing. Actually, it’s based on less than nothing. Its origin is, roughly, this: A nobody Republican with zero credibility or evidence tweeted that 3 million people voted illegally; a conspiracy theory website reported on that tweet, taking it as fact; the president-elect, in need of a distraction, tweeted that information as fact with no citation, not that a

I mentioned that newspapers like the Times don’t call people liars lightly. For corroboration, here’s the Independent reporting on the very fact that the Times called Trump a liar.

The headline is: New York Times brands Donald Trump a liar

The New York Times has publicly accused Donald Trump of lying after he claimed millions of people had voted illegally in the US presidential election.

…

The New York Times used an editorial on Monday to attack Mr Trump’s claims.

In the piece, published under the byline of the paper’s Editorial Board, it said: “This is a lie, part of Mr. Trump’s pattern, stretching back many years, of disregard for indisputable facts.

“There is no evidence of illegal voting

The Times again says Trump has been telling lies, which is something newspapers don’t do lightly.

On Sunday, President-elect Trump unleashed a barrage of tweets complaining about calls for recounts or vote audits in several closely contested states, and culminating in this message: “In addition to winning the Electoral College in a landslide, I won the popular vote if you deduct the millions of people who voted illegally.”

This is a lie, part of Mr. Trump’s pattern, stretching back many years, of disregard for indisputable facts. There is no evidence of illegal voting on even a small scale anywhere in the country, let alone a systematic conspiracy involving “millions.” But this is the message that gets hammered relentlessly