Morning Joe rips into Trump and Secy. of State Mike Pompeo for their endless lies about foreign policy

MSNBC host Joe Scarborough said Monday on “Morning Joe” that he cannot fathom why President Donald Trump and members of his administration lie about things as crucial to national security as foreign policy and also wondered why Trump’s supporters continue to accept those untruths as fact.

Referring to an interview Secretary of State Mike Pompeo gave to Fox News over the weekend, Scarborough noted:

“There really aren’t people that are so stupid, are there? That they watched that performance and believed anything he said? Nobody is that stupid, are they?

“No, I don’t believe that. I do not believe there are any Americans that are so stupid that they would be watching that show and be thrown off — that is something when I was 5 years old, my brother, when he was 8 and my sister, when she was 11, would put their things behind their back and say pick a hand, I know no adult was stupid enough to believe that.”

Later in the segment, Scarborough referenced comments from National Security Adviser John Bolton that a U.S. carrier battle group was headed to the Persian Gulf. Bolton had asserted the move was an attempt to ratchet up pressure on the Iranians, but it turns out the carrier group had been tasked to the area a month ago as part of regular military exercises. That led the host to remark:

“Again, even the carrier group to the Middle East, they had already planned those exercises. And so then they go, ‘Oh, we’re sending a carrier’ – rattling, sabre rattling. And yet it was planned a month before.”

All of the lies, Scarborough concluded, are so easily disproven and transparently false that Trump acolytes must know they’re being misled by simply don’t care:

“What I’m saying is, they’re even lying to their base about that.

“You think the base is so stupid that they can’t go on Google and see a month ago they were planning these exercises? You can’t believe it and not be stupid. So I don’t think they believe it.”

It’s called willful ignorance, and both Trump and his most ardent fans seem eager to engage in it anytime it suits their darker purposes. When lies become truth, freedom begins to die.