In this era of post-truth politics, an unhesitating liar can be king. The more brazen his dishonesty, the less he minds being caught with his pants on fire, the more he can prosper. And those pedants still hung up on facts and evidence and all that boring stuff are left for dust, their boots barely laced while the lie has spread halfway around the world.
The proof is on show most visibly in the US, where Republican nominee-to-be Donald Trump enjoys a relationship to the truth that is chilly, occasional and distant. The Washington Post’s fact-checker blog has awarded its maximum dishonesty rating – four Pinocchios – to nearly 70% of the Trump statements it has vetted. And it’s vetted a lot. That doesn’t mean the other 30% turned out to be true. They just earned three Pinocchios rather than the full four, which means the Post found a shrivelled kernel of veracity wrapped inside the thick layers of fraud, distortion and deception.
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