Donald Trump's surrogates are fighting a war on the truth: "There's no such thing, unfortunately, anymore as facts"

"Everybody has a way of interpreting them to be the truth or not truth," said Trump surrogate Scottie Nell Hughes

By Matthew Rozsa

Staff Writer

Published December 2, 2016 2:47PM (EST)

 (AP Photo/John Minchillo, File)
(AP Photo/John Minchillo, File)

Team Trump seems to genuinely believe that facts don't matter.

During an appearance on "The Diane Rehm Show" on Wednesday, Donald Trump surrogate Scottie Nell Hughes tried to defend the president-elect's entirely baseless claim that he would have won the popular vote had it not been for "millions of people who voted illegally."

"Well, I think it's also an idea of an opinion," Hughes said. "And that's — on one hand, I hear half the media saying that these are lies. But on the other half, there are many people that go, 'No, it's true.' And so one thing that has been interesting this entire campaign season to watch, is that people that say facts are facts — they're not really facts."

She continued, "Everybody has a way — it's kind of like looking at ratings or looking at a glass of half full water. Everybody has a way of interpreting them to be the truth or not truth. There's no such thing, unfortunately, anymore as facts."

Hughes later added, "And so Mr. Trump's tweet, amongst a certain crowd — a large part of the population — are truth. When he says that millions of people illegally voted, he has some — amongst him and his supporters, and people believe they have facts to back that up. Those that do not like Mr. Trump, they say that those are lies and that there are no facts to back it up."

Hughes wasn't alone among Trump surrogates in her dismissal of the concept of objective truth.

“This is the problem with the media. You guys took everything that Donald Trump said so literally,” complained former campaign manager Corey Lewandowski during a Thursday event at Harvard University. “The American people didn’t. They understood it. They understood that sometimes — when you have a conversation with people, whether it’s around the dinner table or at a bar — you’re going to say things, and sometimes you don’t have all the facts to back it up.”


By Matthew Rozsa

Matthew Rozsa is a staff writer at Salon. He received a Master's Degree in History from Rutgers-Newark in 2012 and was awarded a science journalism fellowship from the Metcalf Institute in 2022.

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Related Topics ------------------------------------------

Corey Lewandowski Donald Trump Facts Scottie Nell Hughes The Diane Rehm Show