When someone who is in modern times as open and accepting as the Pope offers a simple statement about the power of truth vs. the potential harm of lies and it makes people wonder if he had you in mind, you’ve really gone astray.
In the short time that President Trump has been in office, he has made himself known by his lies, uttering an estimated over two thousand of them so far.
He makes stuff up at what seems like every opportunity, all while claiming that it’s mainstream media that’s peddling the “fake news.”
No, actually, it’s the president who spreads fake news, seemingly finding it nothing to contort the truth to fit his agenda.
He offers wild claims ranging from the one that the Affordable Care Act is essentially dead — a claim he’s made dozens of times — to the claims that an array of domestic investment decisions that have nothing to do with him actually did have something to do with him and were evidence of the supposed success of his policies.
Pope Francis has something to say about someone who is as committed to lies as Trump is, even though he didn’t mention the U.S. president by name.
The @Pontifex Twitter account posted to the social media platform on Wednesday as follows:
‘There is no such thing as harmless disinformation; trusting in falsehood can have dire consequences.’
The “dire consequences” of Trump’s endless disinformation include serious situations.
For one, Trump has routinely lied about the scope of Russian interference in our electoral systems, interference that has been well documented to have been in his favor. Numerous times, Trump has attempted to downplay the impact of the meddling, if he even acknowledges it at all.
That has potentially serious national security consequences.
What if in a future election, the Russians — or even some other foreign power — are able to be more potent than they were in the past in their election meddling efforts? Russian hackers could do something like electronically change voting outcomes and throw entire elections into question, with Trump having spent his first term in office completely ignoring possible ways he could have chosen to address the issue.
Not only has Trump refused to accept the problem of Russian election meddling, but he’s aided them in their efforts through such means as pointing to problems that don’t exist in the U.S. voting system and thus helping accomplish the Russians’ goal of undermining Americans’ faith in democracy.
Other possible dire outcomes of the president’s lies are economic. For instance, he peddled the idea that the United States was the highest taxed country in the world before he got his tax reform plan passed — a plan he lied and claimed was the largest tax cut to be passed in U.S. history. In reality, that’s false, but it gave the president a basis to proceed with his plans — plans which threaten to send the economy into turmoil thanks to it being focused even more than before on maximizing profits for corporations and upper class people.
Pope Francis and Trump have interacted in the past. The two have gone from trading barbs over Trump’s racist immigration policies to having a meeting during Trump’s first months as president in which the Pope sought to convince Trump of the dangers of climate change.
Trump has unsurprisingly not proven receptive to Pope Francis.
Check out Twitter’s response to the Pope below.
Featured Image via Franco Origlia/ Getty Images
