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Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway introduces the world to 'alternative facts'

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A guide to another reality

Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway has introduced the world to 'alternative facts' when defending White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer's.

If there was one Sunday-morning talk show exchange that describes the new reality for the political media - and for the truth - during the Donald Trump era, this was it.

It was a discussion about White House press secretary Sean Spicer, on his first full day in that job, having taken to the podium and made easily disproved claims about the size of Trump's inauguration crowd.

"Why put him out there for the very first time, in front of that podium, to utter a provable falsehood?" Meet the Press host Chuck Todd asked Kellyanne Conway, counsellor to the President.

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"It's a small thing, but the first time he confronts the public, it's a falsehood?"

After some tense back and forth, Conway offered this:

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"Don't be so overly dramatic about it, Chuck. You're saying it's a falsehood, and they're giving - our press secretary, Sean Spicer, gave alternative facts to that. But the point really is ... "

At this point, a visibly exasperated Todd cut in.

"Wait a minute. Alternative facts? Alternative facts? Four of the five facts he uttered ... were just not true. Alternative facts are not facts; they're falsehoods."

"Fake news" is so yesterday. "Alternative facts" is where it's at now.

This, of course, isn't the first time the Trump team and its supporters have responded to journalists calling out their falsehoods by claiming the truth isn't so black and white or that it's not a big deal.

Former Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski offered this after the election, comparing Trump with a guy at the bar and saying, "You're going to say things, and sometimes you don't have all the facts to back it up."

That week, pro-Trump CNN pundit Scottie Nell Hughes offered this on Diane Rehm's radio show: "One thing that's been interesting this campaign season to watch is that people that say facts are facts - they're not really facts. 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 true. There's no such thing, unfortunately any more, of facts."

Hughes is not an official spokesman for the Trump team, but that last comment is basically what Conway was arguing on Sunday - that there are so many shades of grey that clear facts just don't really exist.

This, of course, is a hugely cynical world view. But it's about the only way the Trump team can fight back, given how questionable the new President's purported facts have been throughout his time as a politician.

Whether you like Trump or not, it's demonstrably true that he says things that are easily proved false, over and over again. The question the media has regularly confronted is not whether Trump's facts are correct but whether to say he's deliberately lying or not.

Trump himself has been using his own brand of the truth, which is often false, for months. And there was really no way that his administration wasn't going to have to deal with that same tendency during his presidency.

On Saturday in Spicer's statement and on Sunday in Conway's interview, the two are attempting to set a precedent that says they don't recognise the concept of facts as the media has come to define them; they have their own "alternative facts" and they'll rely on those.

And as brazen as it is, it's likely to appeal to Trump's base. Polls have regularly shown a large portion of Republicans are more apt to believe Trump's claims even if they are pretty patently false, as Washington Post columnist Catherine Rampell wrote last month. It's a symptom of media distrust.

After Spicer's statement, The New York Times' Glenn Thrush tweeted:

"Prediction: There will be a poll, out next week, that will show 70-80% of Trump supporters believing that Mall photos were fake news."

Both "fake news" and the concept of "alternative facts" are now cudgels in the effort to obfuscate when reporters point out that Trump and his team have their facts wrong. Welcome to our new political reality - or rather, realities.

The Washington Post

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