Robert Reich

[Commentary] President Donald Trump and his White House don’t argue on the merits. They attack the institutions that come up with facts and arguments they don’t like. They even do it preemptively.

Last week, White House press secretary Sean Spicer warned that the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office couldn’t be trusted to come up with accurate numbers about the costs and coverage of the Republican’s replacement for the Affordable Care Act. “If you’re looking at the CBO for accuracy, you’re looking in the wrong place,” he said. So what’s the right place? The Oval Office?

Trump’s big lies are bad enough because they subvert the truth and sow confusion. But Trump’s attacks on the institutions we rely on as sources of the truth are even more dangerous, because they make it harder for the public to believe anything. In a democracy, the truth is a common good. Trump is actively destroying the truth-telling institutions our democracy depends on.

[Robert Reich is the Chancellor Professor of Public Policy at the University of California at Berkeley]