Tornado Alley (PROG)

[blackhawks]

I believe a lie is making a statement that you know is false -- Trump makes statements he believes to be true.

Valid excuse?

Fact-checkers have documented tens of thousands of false or misleading statements by Trump in office, with many repeated long after they were publicly disproven. He has explicitly endorsed the tactic of repetition to get people to believe things (“you say it enough and they’ll start to believe you”).


Your definition matches the **standard philosophical view**: to lie is to assert something you believe is false, not necessarily something you *know* is false. So “I believed it” is not a blanket excuse. [philarchive](https://philarchive.org/archive/MARLKO)

### 1. What is a lie, technically?

Most ethicists define lying roughly as:

- You assert a proposition.
- You **believe** that proposition is false.
- You intend your audience to accept it as true. [scholars.spu](https://scholars.spu.edu/benton/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/2018/08/LyingBeliefKnowledge.pdf)

Knowledge is a stronger state than belief: you can only *know* truths, but you can *believe* falsehoods. So if we required “know it’s false,” almost no one would ever count as lying, because people can always retreat to, “Well, I didn’t *know*.” That’s exactly why the belief-based definition is dominant. [scholars.spu](https://scholars.spu.edu/benton/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/2018/08/LyingBeliefKnowledge.pdf)

### 2. “Bullshit” vs lying

Harry Frankfurt’s famous distinction: the liar is oriented to the truth (knows what it is, and tries to conceal it); the **bullshitter** is indifferent to whether what he says is true or false—he says whatever serves his purpose. [en.wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_or_misleading_statements_by_Donald_Trump)

Commentary applying this to Trump argues that he often fits the bullshitter category: he asserts whatever flatters him or advances his interests, with very little concern for whether it is accurate. That’s not an exoneration; in Frankfurt’s framework, it is morally *worse*, because it erodes the very norm of caring about truth at all. [cnn](https://www.cnn.com/2021/07/05/politics/trump-disinformation-strategy)

### 3. Law: “I believed it” is limited cover

In fraud-like contexts, U.S. law typically looks at whether the person:

- Knew the statement was false,
- Or was *deliberately ignorant* (willful blindness),
- Or acted with *reckless disregard* for whether it was true. [bclplaw](https://www.bclplaw.com/en-US/events-insights-news/us-supreme-court-explains-meaning-of-knowingly-under-the-false-claims-act.html)

So even legally, it is not enough to say “I believed it” if you consciously avoided obvious contrary evidence or were aware of a substantial risk it was false and plowed ahead anyway. That maps pretty well onto the political context: if someone is repeatedly told their claim is false, shown data, and keeps repeating it, “I believed it” loses exculpatory force. [perkinscoie](https://perkinscoie.com/insights/update/us-supreme-court-clarifies-knowledge-requirement-false-claims-act-cases-raising-new)

### 4. Applying this to Trump

Fact-checkers have documented tens of thousands of false or misleading statements by Trump in office, with many repeated long after they were publicly disproven. He has explicitly endorsed the tactic of repetition to get people to believe things (“you say it enough and they’ll start to believe you”). That behavior is very hard to square with sincere error and much easier to understand as at least reckless disregard or bullshit in Frankfurt’s sense, and often outright lying under the belief-based definition. [en.wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_or_misleading_statements_by_Donald_Trump)

### 5. So is “he believes it” a valid excuse?

Philosophically: only if both of these are true:

- He genuinely believes the proposition.
- His belief is not held in the face of clear, accessible contrary evidence that he deliberately ignores.

Once you factor in willful blindness, reckless disregard for evidence, and indifference to truth (bullshitting), “he believes what he says” is, at best, a very partial mitigation and often not a **moral** defense at all. [bclplaw](https://www.bclplaw.com/en-US/events-insights-news/us-supreme-court-explains-meaning-of-knowingly-under-the-false-claims-act.html)