Glenn Kessler on Donald Trump's Assault on Truth
The Lawfare Podcast
The Lawfare Institute
4.7 • 6.4K Ratings
🗓️ 23 June 2020
⏱️ 41 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Glenn Kessler is the head of the Fact Checker staff of the Washington Post. Along with Salvador Rizzo and Meg Kelly, he is the author of the new book, "Donald Trump and His Assault on Truth: The President's Falsehoods, Misleading Claims and Flat-Out Lies." It is a compilation and distillation of the 19,000 false or misleading statements Donald Trump has made and the Washington Post has documented in its mammoth database of presidential untruths since the president took office. Kessler spoke with Benjamin Wittes about what makes Trump different from other presidents, the task of documenting the president's lack of candor on a daily basis and what it all means to have a president who lies this much.
Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | The following podcast contains advertising. |
| 0:04.0 | To access an ad-free version of the LawFair podcast, |
| 0:08.0 | become a material supporter of LawFair at patreon.com slash law fair. |
| 0:14.0 | That's patreon.com slash law fair. |
| 0:18.0 | Also, check out LawFair's other podcast offerings, |
| 0:22.0 | rational security, chatter, law fair no bull, and the aftermath. |
| 0:29.0 | It's hard to find a case where he went against a core interest of his base, |
| 0:37.0 | is that base perceives it. |
| 0:39.0 | He also says things that are demonstrably untrue, |
| 0:43.0 | but he says them because his base believes him. |
| 0:46.0 | So he sounds like a truth title to them. |
| 0:49.0 | And the efforts of fact checkers and things like that, |
| 0:52.0 | it's clear the president often doesn't tell the truth. |
| 0:55.0 | You can see through the polling that we've conducted, |
| 0:58.0 | that his base is now decided that having a president tell the truth is not that important. |
| 1:03.0 | Which means that they know he's not necessarily the most accurate or truthful president, |
| 1:08.0 | but because he's catering to what they perceive as their interests, |
| 1:12.0 | they're willing to overlook that. |
| 1:15.0 | I'm Benjamin Wittes and this is the LawFair podcast June 23, 2020. |
| 1:21.0 | Glenn Kessler is the head of the fact checker staff of the Washington Post, |
| 1:27.0 | along with Salvador Rizzo and Meg Kelly. |
| 1:31.0 | He is the author of the new book Donald Trump and his assault on truth. |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from The Lawfare Institute, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of The Lawfare Institute and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.