How Trump’s Lies Can Inspire New Hope

I used to feel angry and dispirited by the endless lies spewed by Donald Trump. According to Factcheck.org, a non-partisan site dedicated to tracking political lies, Trump has now said over 12,000 lies during his time in office. That’s an average of over 12 lies for each day he’s been President.

In the past, when I’d hear his latest lie, it would hit me as a moral affront. Then, a friend said a single sentence to me about Trump that completely changed my experience. With one sentence, I went from outraged to encouraged–even inspired–by Trump’s daily barrage of falsehoods. The sentence? Simply this: “When Trump speaks, what he says is almost always the exact opposite of what’s really true.”

Now this sentence may not immediately hit you as a life- changing revelation from on high. Nor did it first hit me that way. Yet, the more I thought about it, it gradually occurred to me what this truly meant. It meant that I could simply take just about anything Trump said and turn it around to its opposite to know what was really going on. So, I thought about what Trump has said in the past, such as:

1. What people write about him is simply fake news.

2. He’s not worried about how the economy is doing. It’s doing great.

3. There was no quid pro quo with Ukraine.