By David K. Shipler
If you lie
to your children, they will learn to lie to you. If you lie to your spouse, you
will create a family culture of falsehood in which he or she will, unless
strongly honest, lie to you as well. If you lie to your employees, don’t expect
them to pass uncomfortable truths up the chain of command. And if, as
president, you lie to the country and perhaps to your staff, many of them will
breathe the miasma of fabrication that emanates from the top, and will surely
assume that lying is an acceptable way of life in the White House.
So
President Trump’s dismissal of Michael Flynn for lying is like a projection of
Trump’s own personality flaw onto his subordinate. It is worth noting that this
happened only when the Flynn offense became public, courtesy of the “dishonest”
Washington Post, which Trump told
reporters aboard Air Force One that he hadn’t seen—a lie in itself, given that
he’d been told two weeks earlier by the Justice Department about the contents
of wiretapped conversations between Flynn and the Russian ambassador.
Does anyone think that the then
president-elect did not authorize those conversations, that Flynn just flew
solo without consulting with Trump? Is it possible that Trump ordered, or at
least approved, Flynn’s discussing the post-Ukraine sanctions with the ambassador,
perhaps obliquely suggesting that they could be eased by the incoming
administration? Then, in the poisonous atmosphere of the West Wing after the
inauguration, might Trump have wanted the substance of those discussions held
closely, even from Vice President Mike Pence, who is no Russia fan? So, was
Flynn just following his boss’s wishes in telling Pence that sanctions had not
been discussed?
And by the way, shouldn’t the
former head of the Defense Intelligence Agency know that the Russian
ambassador’s phone calls are monitored by the National Security Agency? Did Flynn figure on Trump’s having his back if transcripts were ever leaked? Note that
the day after asking for Flynn’s resignation, Trump called him “a wonderful man”
who was treated unfairly by the “fake media” and outed by leakers who committed
a crime.
You see, Mr. President, this is
what compulsive lying at the top leads to. Everything down below begins to look
like a lie as well.
