'Lies and distortions': New York Times offers unusually blunt assessment of Trump tactics

Some liberal critics of the New York Times in the past have accused the paper of "sane-washing" President Donald Trump by using euphemisms that downplay Trump's routine dishonesty and seeming detachment from reality.

However, a piece written by the New York Times' Peter Baker that was published on Sunday used unusually direct words to describe some of Trump's most recent statements as "lies and distortions."

At the start of the piece, Baker runs through multiple demonstrably false claims that Trump has made in recent weeks, including that the Biden administration sent tens of millions of dollars worth of condoms to Gaza and that Ukraine was responsible for Russia's military invasion.

"In the first month since he returned to power, he has demonstrated once again a brazen willingness to advance distortions, conspiracy theories and outright lies to justify major policy decisions," Baker writes. "Mr. Trump has long been unfettered by truth when it comes to boasting about his record and tearing down his enemies. But what were dubbed 'alternative facts' in his first term have quickly become a whole alternative reality in his second to lay the groundwork for radical change as he moves to aggressively reshape America and the world."

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New York University historian Ruth Ben-Ghiat, who is an expert on authoritarian movements and leaders, tells the Times that Trump's willingness to repeat falsehoods constantly without any regard for their veracity makes him "one of the most skilled propagandists in history."

Hunter College historian Benjamin Carter Hett, meanwhile, told Baker that there was a direct link between Trump's campaign of lies and the sort of propaganda that Nazis used to gain power nearly 100 years ago.

"Exactly the same kind of thing happened in the very diverse and lively German press of the 1920s and 1930s," he said.