Somebody said

Trump again casually told a random lie about a public official, for no apparent reason apart from floating malice and aggression. The Times put it more politely, as “falsely blames” and “wrongly blamed,” but what they mean is he lied and defamed.

Defending his son’s meeting with a Russian lawyer during the 2016 presidential campaign, President Trump wrongly blamed former Attorney General Loretta Lynch for admitting the lawyer to the United States in the first place.

“Somebody said that her visa or her passport was approved by Attorney General Lynch,” Mr. Trump said Thursday at a joint news conference with President Emmanuel Macron of France. “She was here because of Lynch.”

And that “somebody” was Donald Trump, lying again.

Anderson Cooper was blistering about that “Somebody said” last night, pointing out that if reporters tried to cite “somebody said” as a source they’d be fired. He does that all the time, Trump does – somebody said, everybody says, people are saying, I just learned, I heard, everybody knows – variations on the theme of generic nameless meaningless placeholder where a source should be. That’s ok in conversation when it’s a matter of information whose source you can’t remember, but it’s not at all ok when it’s a matter of claiming Real Person With Name did something illegal or immoral – it’s not at all ok but it’s habitual with Trump. It’s a good signal to the nature of the man, that it comes so easily to him. That right there is a man with no scruples or conscience or sense of decency whatsoever – a psychopath perhaps, but at any rate a selfish immoral shit.

Veselnitskaya entered the US in June 2016 through a visitor’s visa issued by the State Department. Loretta Lynch was not the Secretary of State, she was the Attorney General.

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