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Data and Research Manager

What Ben Bradlee Would Think of Donald Trump

The following commentary by Sally Quinn was posted on the Politico.com website July 13, 2018:

My late husband would not have been impressed. Nor intimidated. He believed the truth mattered.

A file picture taken on May 6, 1973 in Paris shows former Washington Post editor Ben Bradlee. Credit: Stringer, AFP, Getty Images

There is a big, white, two-story wall in the center of the newsroom at the Washington Post directly across from the glass-walled Ben Bradlee Story Conference Room. On the wall in bold letters in Post font is this quote from my late husband: “The truth, no matter how bad, is never as dangerous as a lie in the long run.”

What Ben believed — that lies are degrading and corrosive to the deceiver no less than the deceived, that truth is liberating for both individuals and societies — is something that at bottom every journalist I know believes. Ben knew Donald Trump slightly but died in 2014 before his emergence as a political leader whose words and values have consequences that echo around the globe.

Amid the daily (make that hourly) torrent of deceit in the Trump era — Trump lies on average 6½ times a day, according to one tally, and made 29 false or misleading statements in just one speech last week — I can’t help but wonder how he would be viewing the spectacle.

View the complete article on the Politico.com website here.

Categories: National Issues Trump Administration
Tags: Bill BradleeDonald TrumpSally Quinn
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