If You Need to Lie anent an Opponent’s Supposed Lies…

Speakers of Lies in Hypocrisy*

I should have hoped that
decent people would not need
this explanation:

all those who condemn
liars on moral grounds have
an obligation

to ensure their own
claims are based on facts and true.
A declaration

which merely repeats
another man’s fallacious
representation,

unchecked, is as wrong,
morally, as a willful
calumniation.†

Still, it’s good to see
that even liars dislike
tergiversation.‡

* “ἐν ὑποκρίσει ψευδολόγων…” (I Tim., iv:2).
† I say this because the leader of the world’s most powerful nation is called a liar by the most flagrant liars; their denigration seems moved by hatred for popular policies on immigration (and the like) which, they assert falsely, are quite fascist in motivation.
‡ Some readers mentioned that they had to search in a dictionary for the word “tergiversation”; I responded: “I’m sorry for the eccentricity; it would have been an infelicity to use the non-rhyming “duplicity”.

UPDATE I (16 Feb. 2017):  see John Nolte’s “24 Pieces of MSM Fake News in 5 Days” and Daniel Payne’s “16 Fake Stories Reporters Have Run since Trump Won”; see also “If You Just Started Caring about Political Scandals Again, You’re a Brazen Hypocrite” by Matt Walsh:

The truth matters.  It matters now just as it mattered for the past eight years.  So when Dan Rather claims that Trump may already be guilty of the biggest political scandal in his lifetime, and the New York Times insists that Obama had a scandal free White House, and USA Today along with many other outlets echo that absolutely ridiculous assertion, it behooves those of us who value the truth to calmly respond: UM, WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU PEOPLE TALKING ABOUT?

UPDATE II (16 Feb.):  see “When Lying about Secret Meetings Was OK” by Jack Cashill.

UPDATE III (16 Feb.):  watch “Lying to America” written and directed by David Gray:

UPDATE IV (17 Feb.):  Katty Kay, an alleged journalist for the BBC, posted a series of complaints on Twitter mocking Pres. Trump including this inaccurate assertion:

I posted a response:

Katty Kay is dissatisfied.
“Some people say we’re fake,” she cried,
“and then Mr. Trump said ‘They lied’!”
(BBC folk cannot abide
being criticised; they may chide
leaders but it’s undignified
for a president to deride
the world’s self-appointed news guide.)
Katty Kay, have you really tried
to be more honest and less snide
and, for once, to try to provide
accurate news, not of one side,
but with fairness strictly applied?
No, you are completely one-eyed.

Chuck Todd, an alleged journalist for NBC News, posted this complaint on Twitter:

I responded:

If delegitimizing the press be so heinous, @chucktodd, perhaps the press should stop delegitimizing itself with crazed bias.

UPDATE V (2 March):  watch the NRA’s “Truth Doesn’t Matter to The New York Times”: