Former President Donald Trump has taken lying on the political stage to an entirely new level, wrote former Obama administration undersecretary of state Richard Stengel Tuesday.
"I remember the quaint old days when we used to talk about politicians 'lying,'" posted Stengel on X. "Trump has reinvented political lying on an industrial scale. Politicians mostly lied to save themselves; he lies to distort, to wound, to harm, to undermine our democracy."
"Yes, he lies because it's in his interest — but he also likes [sic] because it's in his nature," Stengel added.
His comments came in response to a no-holds-barred fact-check by CNN's Daniel Dale on several days of false claims the former president has made about Hurricane Helene, the devastating storm that tore a path of death and property destruction across Northern Florida, Georgia, the Carolinas and Virginia.
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Among other things, Trump has claimed that President Joe Biden would not take disaster relief calls from Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp, that his administration was withholding resources from Republican areas, that people who lost their homes are only receiving $750 in relief, that Vice President Kamala Harris spent "all her FEMA money" to house migrants, and that no rescue operations are being carried out in North Carolina — none of which was true.
Many of the affected areas are now bracing for a second storm as Hurricane Milton is barreling across the Gulf of Mexico towards Florida. It weakened slightly from a category 5 storm to a category 4 on Tuesday, forecasters said.