Before imposing the naval quarantine during the Cuban Missile Crisis, President Kennedy sent personal envoys to his principal allies to be sure that they would support him. To Paris he sent former Secretary of State Dean Acheson, a very tough-minded man, as (of course) was President De Gaulle. Acheson was given his appointment in Paris with President De Gaulle. It was a small meeting. In the middle of his briefing of De Gaulle, Acheson reached down into his briefcase, saying, “Here, let me show you the photos, [of the Russian missiles in Cuba].” De Gaulle waved him off and said, “No, no, no, no. The word of the president of the United States is good enough for me.”[1] Would any prominent foreign leader say something similar to an American emissary today? To ask the question is to answer it.
In terms of whether the U.S. can any longer be trusted and whether Biden can convince allies that we can, consider the following: Trump was elected and smashed everything; Biden beat him after one term in 2020 but will only serve one term himself. So, for an ally what will it be 2024—another Trump or another Biden?
A very high percentage of what Trump has said every day has been deliberate lie or misstatement. Until Trump’s presidency, statements by America’s president were believed and acted upon around the world, from Washington to Lincoln to Teddy Roosevelt to FDR, JFK and Obama. Sadly, in recent years, our allies and friends—even our enemies—quickly learned that one cannot believe, trust or rely upon anything that Trump says. Distrust of Trump is explained by the Washington Post’s fact checker, Glenn Kessler and his two assistants, Salvador Rizzo and Meg Kelly, in their book published in early 2020, Donald Trump and His Assault on Truth: The President’s Falsehoods, Misleading Claims and Flat-Out Lies. The authors catalogued Trump’s lies from Inauguration Day 2017, to January 20, 2020, three full years. As of that day the count of lies and misleading claims over three full years came to 16,241. “That works out to about 15 claims a day. But the pace of deception has quickened exponentially. He averaged about six claims a day in 2017, nearly 16 a day in 2018 and more than 22 a day in 2019.”[2]
The Washington Post recently said that later in 2020 the average rose to 50 a day, in August still higher, 56 a day. And some of his days were simply phenomenal, “189 claims (a record) on August 11, 147 claims on August 17, 113 claims on August 20. The previous one day record was 138 claims—on November 5, 2018.”[3] It appears that by the end of October, Trump had made over 6,000 false statements in just nine months. Obviously, it is impossible to do normal business with a man like this, someone you can never believe.
Biden has made clear he will be a one-term president. So, in 2024, what will it be for the United States? Will we return to our practice, which began the Republic, of electing presidents who the world trusts and respects or will we have another corrupt Trump-like figure? As Biden tries convince other countries that the United States can be trusted today, it is only natural they will be very, very cautious. It may take a long time for the American president to regain the trust that went with the office at the time of JFK. De Gaulle may not have agreed with JFK’s policy, but he trusted the factual accuracy of his message.
“A lie stands on 1 leg, Truth on 2.” – Benjamin Franklin, 1735
“…I see my friends and friends of the public duped in so gross a manner that I despair.” – John Adams, 1790
“When a man has one of the two greatest parties in a nation, interested in representing him to be disinterested, even those who believe it to be a lie will repeat it so often to one another that at last they will seem to believe it to be true.” – John Adams, 1807
“There is no vice so mean, so pitiful, so contemptible as he who permits himself to tell a lie once, finds it much easier the second and third time, till at length it becomes habitual. He tells lies without attending to it, and truths without the world’s believing him. This falsehood of the tongue leads to that of the heart, and in time depraves all its good dispositions.” – Thomas Jefferson, 1785
“I hate deception even when the imagination only is concerned.” – George Washington, 1779
“Tis hard for an empty bag to stand upright.” – Benjamin Franklin, 1758
“Tricks and treachery are the practice of fools that have not wit enough to be honest.” – Benjamin Franklin, 1740
John Jay
[1] Aaron Erlich, “Kerry Got the De Gaulle Story Half-Right,” History News Network, n.d. https://historynewsnetwork.org/article/7886.
[2] Glenn Kessler, “A Hierarchy of American Presidential Lies: How The Washington Post Tracks Politicians’ Falsehoods,” Literary Hub, June 10, 2020, https://lithub.com/a-hierarchy-of-american-presidential-lies/.
[3] Glenn Kessler, Salvador Rizzo and Meg Kelly, “Trump is Averaging More than 40 False or Misleading Claims a Day,” Washington Post, October 22, 2020, https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/10/22/president-trump-is-averaging-more-than-50-false-or-misleading-claims-day/.