NPR ignited a debate this week over whether its reporters should be calling Donald Trump's endless flow of verifiably false utterances "lies." No, argued national security correspondent Mary Louise Kelly, referencing the definition of the word "lie":
"A false statement made with intent to deceive," Kelly says. "Intent being the key word there. Without the ability to peer into Donald Trump's head, I can't tell you what his intent was.”
I wholeheartedly agree that "lie" presumes intent. But if Trump is not intentionally lying—a possibility that NPR is endorsing—then something is terribly terribly wrong. He has no grip on reality, which frankly, is entirely possible. So if NPR is going to maintain the possibility that Trump's falsehoods aren't intentional (i.e. he's not lying) then the only other plausible explanation for those falsehoods is that his version of reality is wildly removed from the world the rest of us inhabit (i.e. he's mentally ill).
For instance, let's dissect Trump's statement last weekend that the CIA has his support "1,000 percent" and journalists simply fabricated his rift with the agency. Just last month Trump's transition team maligned the CIA, reminding Americans: "These are the same people that said Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction." Twice this month, Trump himself compared the CIA to Nazi Germany after he felt slighted by leaked information about the agency's intelligence report on Russia's election interference. (In fact, here's some handy back-to-back footage.)
Look, it's quite simply impossible for a sane person to believe that those two statements = “1,000 percent” support.
In other words, if Trump is sane, then he's intentionally misleading people—or lying—when he proclaims his unequivocal support for the CIA. The only other explanation for such completely irreconcilable statements is that he's mentally unstable.
So if NPR won't call Trump a liar because they're holding open the possibility that his consistently false proclamations aren't intentional, then by default they are suggesting that Trump might not be sane. And if NPR doesn't accept the premise that he is intentionally misleading people, then it's incumbent upon the news outlet to explore the only other reasonable explanation for his constantly conflicting claims.
Trump’s back-to-back statements: