star's dorondo dale, and in the face of all that lying the president took it to a new level this week. >> just remember what you're seeing and what you're reading is not what's happening. >> well, this is a president who doesn't hesitate to tell you that whatiosee with your own eyes and hear with your own ears is not the truth. the sheer number of lies can be overwhelming, and the danger is we'll become numb to all of this, that we'll tell ourselves it's just trump being trump. but there's a larger question here. can the truth survive president trump? as a new york real estate developer he built his business on his own blatant lies claiming trump tower has 68 floors when the truth is easy to see, it has 58. when according to a forbes reporter his real worth was closer to $5 billion and this is man who built his campaign on lies starting with racist birther lie starting with president barack obama was not born in this country, a lie he still reportedly clings to in private. >> he wasn't born in this country which is a real possibility. >> claiming he saw muslims celebrating on roofs in new jersey on 9/11. never happened. claiming he opposed the iraq war from the beginning when the fact is his first critical comments came 18 months into the war. suggesting ted cruz's father was somehow involved in the jfk assassination which is just beyond belief. and now as president donald trump is lying more and more and doubling down on his strategy of trying to discredit anyone who questions his lies. well, what are these lies doing to our democracy? to our standing in the world? facts still matters, right? the truth still matters. so are you going to believe the man who tells you to ignore the facts, ignore the truth or are you going to believe what you see with your own eyes or hear with your own ears? good question. let's bring in now david chalian. president trump's lies are coming fast and furious. as i've just said before, he's made 54 false claims last week and says that in the last six weeks -- the last ten weeks his most dishonest weeks as president. that's according to dorondo dale. why is this getting worse? >> two things. one i think the president is under increasing pressure from the michael cohen thing, but the real reason why you see an up tick in this and no desire from the president to step away from this behavior is because he doesn't suffer huge repercussions for it in terms of his base of support, in terms of the people who work for him and are interacting with him every day. in terms of his party's members of congress who he's dealing with. there's no flood away from him that this is unacceptable in some way from his circle of influencers. and that to me gives him permission to continue to do this. >> president trump, he's been astonishingly effective, david, in getting his followers to believe him even in the face of bold faced lie. is there any sense that things are changing and as this becomes more frequent and even boulder as he does that? >> i don't see any evidence of that change, of what you're saying about his supporters starting not to believe what he's saying. i don't see any evidence of A recap of the day's news. and no, neither i or anyone else has ever seen anything like this. truth is the currency of democracy. without truth you don't have government, an informed electorate, you don't have a democracy. you don't have a constitutional republic based on the principle of democracy. you just can't do it. that's central. now, donald trump has been very effective with a certain segment of the population. surprising to me and a large segment of the population, roughly something of a third, running up to maybe 40%. i would say about the previous interview you did with david, that there are some signs that some of his base, women in the suburbs but according to polls are beginning to say we've had enough. just a footnote. look, what's happening now is donald trump is authoritarian. he wants people to believe that the only truth, the one and only A recap of the day's news. era in which there's no such thing as objective facts. he has all the facts, he has all the information, just listen to him. that's what he's preaching and that's his presidency. i also agree there's no desperation. i do think that the appearance of closing the mueller investigation, some of what's happening with some of his former counsel, mr. cohen, i think thig is beginning to tell on him some. as he gets more desperate he takes bigger risks in telling bigger lies or more often telling lies, and telling people, look, don't believe what you read or see anywhere else, just come to me. i have the ultimate truth, i am the way. >> so i asked david do his supporters not believe him or do they just not care. you say most americans see through the propaganda. i hope you're right. why do you say that? >> appreciate your time. when we come back donald trump's tangled relationship with the truth goes way back. how he built his real estate empire on a foundation of lies and how he got away with it for so many years. when you bundle your auto and home insurance with esurance, you could save with their single deductible. so if you confused the brake with the gas, or if your lamp post jumped out of nowhere, or if you forgot your bike was on the roof rack, you only pay one deductible -instead of two- for a claim involving both your auto and home. and when you save that much, it's almost like it... never even happened. that's auto and home insurance for the modern world. esurance. an allstate company. click or call. at&t provides edge-to-edge intelligence, covering virtually every part of your business. so this won't happen. because you've made sure this sensor and this machine are integrated. atta, boy. & yes, some people assign genders to machines. & with edge-to-edge intelligence, you'll know your customers love this color, & don't love this one. never getting grape again. & you can adjust in near real time. & if someone tries to breach your firewall in london & you start to panic... don't. you've got allies on the outside, & security algorithms on the inside. & if it's jammed up here, & it's hot in here. & you know both those things, you can do this. & your flowers won't wilt. at&t provides edge to edge intelligence. it can do so much for your business, the list goes on and on. that's the power of &. & when her patient's blood pressure drops, she can share the information with... the coauthor of "the art of the deal" are both here to talk about that. but first gloria takes a long look at trump's history of lies. >> reporter: from the election itself. >> in many places like california, the same person votes many times. you probably heard about that. they like to say, oh, that's a conspiracy theory. not a conspiracy, folks. millions and millions of people. >> reporter: to the inauguration. >> we had a massive field of people, it went all the way back to the washington monument. >> reporter: to statements like this. >> what you're seeing and what you're reading is not what's happening. >> reporter: donald trump has had a fraught relationship with the truth. one that goes back decades. to the building and selling of trump tower where barbara res managed the construction. >> he planted that i was looking for an apartment in trump tower. >> and that didn't happen? >> no. but it made the papers. >> sure. so voracity wasn't a part of it. it was just getting the buzz out there about trump? >> yes. >> did you guys laugh at it or -- >> there was nothing so terrible about it. it was kind of like puffing. you know it was like exaggerating. >> tony schwartz, coauthor of trump's art of the deal has a name for this. >> i call it an innocent form of exaggeration. now i can call something that i actually sold for $2 million, i can say $10 million and that becomes truthful hyperbole. the truth is the truth, hyperbole is a lie. they don't go together. >> reporter: and they didn't go together of trump's taj mahal cuseen eo in 1990 when some of the flauocks didn't work. >> when they went down, many things hadn't been done. they shutdown a third of the slots. >> reporter: slots that were critical to the casino's success. >> to shutdown a third on opening day was both humiliating and financially disastrous, and it was only done because he doesn't have, you know, an organization in-depth. >> reporter: but that wasn't the story trump told. >> something could go bad like the opening of the taj, and he would say it's because we had so much business here this happened. not because the systems broke down, not because we didn't know what we were doing. truly he would just lie about everything. >> reporter: and he did. >> what about the slot machine thing when they were down for a while? >> the slots were so hot. again, nobody's seen people play that hard and that fast. >> so it blew out the slots. >> it blew apart. >> so wrapped up in hyperbole it's almost constant lies, whether it's the littlest things, you know, where if you had 2,000 people at an event, you know, he would say there was 5,000 people at an event. >> reporter: and he got away with it. >> there's no belief system. if it will work i will say it. if it stops working i'll say it's opposite and i will not feel any compungz about saying it's opposite because i don't feel anything in the first place. >> reporter: switching gears is exactly what president trump had to do after his press conference with vladimir putin, attempting to walk back this remark on election interference. >> my people came to me, dan coats came to me and some others. they said they think it's russia. i have president putin, he just said it's not russia. i will say this, i don't see any reason why it would be. >> in a key sentence in my remarks i said the word would instead of wouldn't. the sentence should have been, "i don't see any reason why i wouldn't or why it wouldn't be russia." >> seeing it from his perspective doesn't make a distinction between what's true and what's false. his only distinction is what will work and what will not work. >> reporter: and what happens when he's challenged with facts? what does he do? >> he has a genius, you know, perverse genius for turning any situation into something that is evidence of his brilliance. even if it's not true. >> wow, we have a lot to talk about. gloria, tony, when we come back i'm going to ask both of you could donald trump have been a success without the lies? ♪ it is such a good time to kiss ♪ visit comcastspotlight.com today. donald trump has a strategy of ignoring the truth. first in business and now as president. because it doesn't suit his narrative. the truth gets in the way -- in his way, and lying is his main mo to get what he wants. let's discuss now with gloria borger and tony schwartz. glor you, great reporting but i want to start with tony because he co-wrote "the art of the deal." he really wrote the art of the deal. could he have been as successful or the appearnce of being as successful as people think he is without lying? >> well, he's the product of his own marketing, so i would say, no, he actually couldn't have been as remotely as successful starting, for example, with the success he had getting on the forbes 500 list when he was worth almost nothing, and he managed to trump it up and convince them it was $10 million or $20 million or $100 million. >> himself or pretending to be somebody else -- >> no, he would pretend to harangue the reporters gathering that information. >> financial analysts tell me there's no evidence he's a billionaire. >> rick, it seems as ehe's disappeared off the face of the earth, but he once said to me donald is not worth anything. it's a complete joke. it's a house of cards. >> gloria, what about in politics? he didn't lie the way he does do you think he would have been able to survive the multiple scandals so far? >> he's a brander. he brands himself, and as tony pointed out in the piece quite astutely i think, with donald trump it's not about true or false. it's about will this work for me or won't this work for me? so in a campaign he will do what works for him. and if it doesn't work for him anymore he will turn around and do something else. and that's what we saw in helsinki, for example. and i think this is the way he markets himself. and by the way, what he does is exploit the fact that his supporters hate the media, don't trust the media. you know, three quarters of republicans trust trump more than the media. so he doesn't care. he doesn't care because he'll say believe me because you don't trust those guys, you trust me more and it works. >> yeah, and some actually believe him. you know, as i say -- as i've been saying since the election or during the election that new yorkers knew, people around the country didn't necessarily know. because they saw him as the apprentice, right? and so maybe that works, that thing you call truthful hyperbole, maybe it works in that instance. alpha male. >> yeah, he's president of the united states. it clearly works. but what i think is trump actually believes, and this is the totalitarian instinct in him, and it's very strong. trump actually believes if he says something over and over again no matter how totally outrageous it is, for example, and i would say this is the best example so far, yesterday the day before when he said what you're seeing is not true -- we just saw it repeated. what you're seeing is not true, that's prima facia insane. if you say it enough time, no collusion, no collusion, that you could have collusion in living color, 360 degree and you still would have no argument to make. >> and gloria, some have said that they believe it, even legal minds that collusion, according to them, has already been proven with the meeting in trump tower and, you know, with the one with jared and donald trump, jr. i don't know if that's so, but legal folks have said that. there's so much out there that people i guess don't believe because of what the president and this administration have said about it. and if you look at the intensity of what's happening with him saying don't believe what you see or hear, why is it ramping up all of a sudden? >> well, look, i think he to a certain degree feels some of the walls closing in on him. he has the mueller investigation still going on. his attorneys are still talking to the special counsel about whether he's going to testify and talk about the question of lying, i think one of the reasons his attorneys don't want him to testify is because they're worried about it, right? they're very worried about it. and i think his back is up against the wall. one of his most ardent loyalists, michael cohen, has now turned on him. there is a subpoena for the chief financial officer of the trump organization to talk to the southern district of new york. and i think that trump feels the need every day to gather his troops and to say do not believe this, there's no collusion, and again i'm not saying there is because i'm not bob mueller. but there is no collusion, don't believe this, the media are lying about this, and that is the way he keeps his supporters activated to a degree because he motivates them. >> go ahead, john. >> well, i think that in addition to what gloria said i agree with it. there's something going on psychologically. and the media has it, the culture has it a resistance to talk about mental health, to talk about mental illness. and then you've got the gold water rule that says even professionals can't diagnose from afar. but what you can do is you can observe the behavior, and the behavior is the behavior of a man who decompensating, who is essentially falling apart. and he's falling apart in the sense that he is upping the most extreme behaviors. so when we try to understand why is he lying more, why is he tweeting more frequently, why is he saying more extreme things, all of these are function of what's going on inside him. which is i am used to controlling the narrative. i am not seeming to be able to do that. >> what does this say, though, gloria, about his supporters, the way he feels about the people who support him when he constantly lies to them or gives them false hope and expectations? >> well, i don't think -- it's interesting, and i -- you know, i'm not psychologist. but i think after aa while if you tell a lie long enough you believe it's the truth. and i think that may be donald trump. and i think donald trump is very attach today his supporters. i've never seen a president reach out less to people who didn't vote for him than trump. normally presidents get elected, they try to unite the country. they say you didn't vote for me but please give me a shot. that is not what we've seen. we've seen donald trump instead try to consolidate the base even more. and he's a politician. he doesn't want to lose the congress. he doesn't want to lose the presidency if he runs for re-election, and they are devoted to him and he knows it and he's not going to lose them, and this works for him. and setting up enemies always works in politics. and so the press is the enemy, the democrats are the enemy, you name it. and that's what he does. and it works. >> i've got to go quickly. tony? >> i think you asked the question what does it say about his supporters. it says something about how aggrieved and how empty -- >> you lie to the people you care about. >> there's no one who he cares about more than his supporters. they are america's losers. >> why do you say that? >> because they're people without power, without success, without all the things he values most they have least. >> i thought you were going to say they're a means to an end. >> they are absolutely a means to the end. when we come back the big question. will truth in america survive donald trump's presidency? we knew helping our communities was important then. and we know it's even more important today. so we're stepping up to volunteer more and donate over a million dollars every day. so our communities can be even stronger. it's a new day at wells fargo. but it's a lot like our first day. of depression or suicidal thoughts, or if these feelings develop. some people taking otezla reported weight loss. your doctor should monitor your weight and may stop treatment. other side effects include upper respiratory tract infection and headache. tell your doctor about all the medicines you take and if you're pregnant or planning to be. ♪ otezla. show more of you. well, esurance makes finding the right coverage easy. in fact, drivers who switched from geico to esurance saved an average of $412. that's auto and home insurance for the modern world. esurance. an allstate company. click or call. all of president trump's lies in office, all of 2,000 of them so far. damaging our democracy, and can we ever get back to where we were? douglas brinkly, kirsten powers and carlos lozata. listen, the president is lying more often than ever, and the lies seem to be more bold. they seem to be boulder than ever. is the public desensitized to all of his lies? >> i don't think they're desensitized. they let him get away with too much. collectively to mean people didn't read his character directly. donald trump lies like breathing. he doesn't know what the truth is. but i think he's kind of an odious aberration in american politics. he's had momentum, he's shocked our system, a product of social media environment in changing television media dynamkz. but the idea we're going to have more donald trumps yet to come doesn't seem likely to me. i think what's hurting, don, is that the united states, we're the beacon of light that the world looks up to us and now we're being laughed otat all over the globe, that we produced this caricature of a president. i see his continuing lying as a president that's unraveling right now. >> you wrote an article whether truth can survive this presidency, and you explore this idea of what you call truth decay. tell us about that. >> yes, people talk about the death of truth, whether we leave in a post. truth environment. it's probably more productive to think about ways in which truth is decaying or eroding. more than really post-truth, we may be in a post-shame sort of environment where the consequences of lying are vastly diminished. and that's not quite sort of the death of truth. but i think it's just as insidious because when there are no consequences to lying accountability is diminished as well. and that's really what's going on with the president's sort of torrent of falsehoods is that he's looking for ways to not be held accountable. if you can't agree on what's truly happened, then how can you decide if your leader is doing a good job. and if you can't decide they're doing a good job, then what kind of democracy do you have left? >> studies show it's very difficult for people to tell lies from the truth. the brain first has to accept the lie as a truth and then make a judgment to discard it as false. the first part is natural to the brain. the second part can be disrupted. so people can end up believing the lie. so how do journalists and thinkers overcome that? >> well, i think it's important to keep calling it out and keep making it clear when something isn't true, and i think it's important to stay outraged. so a lot of times i see people rolling their eyes and sort of saying oh, that's just trump being hyperbolic when in fact he's lying about something. so i think it's important to continue to say that and not get lulled into this idea that this is normal. i think one of the problems like you said, people believe it and then they repeat it. oftentimes when you're trying to have a conversation perhaps on your show or another show and you're talking to somebody who is just, they're not actually having debate. they're not actually talking about facts, they're just saying things that aren't true, jow spend your entire time -- >> you know how frustrating that is for me. you've been here when we've had some of those arguments. that's why this whole theory of people have to believe the lie first. it has to be true and then you have to sort of think about it and say, okay, that's not real, and that part as i said can be disrupted. that's why i like to shut it down right as it's happening or fact check people in realtime before they continue on with the lie. and i think that's important to do. people get upset and say, oh, well you're shutting down my right to speak. no, you're lying to people and i understand the process of repeating and people will believe it. >> i recommend a book called "on tyranny" by timothy snider. they try to destroy truth, and they don't want there to be any truth. they want everybody to be fighting with each other and turning against each other and eventually tuning out because they get to this point where they say this is too much spectacle. this is what putin does. there's too much spectacle, and we're going to get mad at each other and stop expecting anything from the government. that's what trump is doing. >> it's cleary a strategy. >> yeah, i think it's wrong to think he's too dumb, which i hear people saying. he's too dumb to do that. i think he understands what he's doing. it's true he has a distorted reality but i also think he knows the things he can say and it doesn't matter. >> she outlines a pattern where trump uses to gaslight america. step one, stake a claim on a fringe issue, step two advance and deny which is what trump does when he says things people are saying. and step three, create suspense, and step four discredit the apopants. step five, declare a victory. so if we can outline a pattern, identify what the president is doing, why cent we stop it? >> because he keeps doing it. he understands the power of repetition very much. you know, if you keep saying that you won the biggest electoral landslide in decades, if you keep saying that the tax cut was the biggest tax cut in history, that is going to stick eventually with some people. especially if the falsehood is in keeping with someone's pre-existing political believes. if you're inclined for instance to believe that immigrants have a detrimental impact on the american economy or american society, then you might be inclined to believe it when the president says that, you know, millions of them voted illegally in the election, even though there's no evidence to that effect. so i think he understands the kind of rhythm of how he keeps doing this. what's also important in this context, remember, is that affirming, accepting or even defending trump's falsehoods is not necessarily about conviction of -- in that fact. it's about allegiance. it's about standing by your guy. and that's the quality trump prizes above all else which is loyalty. >> and i've been watching that happen for the last three years. i think it's astute you said that. i think it's fair to say this presidency is a great experiment as well. the question is and i want to ask my historian douglas brinkly can we survive it. hiv or any other medical conditions and about all the medicines you take including herbal supplements. taking amiodarone with harvoni can cause a serious slowing of your heart rate. common side effects of harvoni include tiredness, headache and weakness. ready to let go of hep c? ask your hep c specialist about harvoni. or if you have received a vaccine or plan to. if you have inflammatory bowel disease, tell your doctor if symptoms develop or worsen. serious allergic reactions may occur. never give up. see me. see me. clear skin can last. don't hold back... ...ask your dermatologist if cosentyx can help you find clear skin that lasts. >> back now with douglas brinkley and kirsten powers and carlos save da-- zaida. and so we laid it out there that is this a democracy that we can survive. >> yes, the presence is not uniquely oppressive and the country has gone through such horrific things, and john meacham has a bookt out about "perilous times. "and i have three kids can in school, and everybody knows that nobody cares that george this like george orwell that two plus two is five. because two plus two is four. and i have december 1941's pearl harbor and facts matter. if you think that they don't t matter, you won't get far in the 21st century. we are in a rut, and we have broketen washington politics. it is not about barack obama being just a beacon of light, but people like john mccain and mitt romney were to have a good match with obama. trump has just been a nightmare and the problem is that the republican s a republicans are not showing courage standing up to somebody who is a serial liar and somebody who no kid in america can look up to and aspire to be. >> yeah. i want you to the listen to this clip from president obama last week talking about politicians and lying. >> unfortunately too much of politics today seems to reject the very concept of objective truth. people just make stuff up. they just make stuff up. we see the uter loss of shame of the political leaders who are caught in a lie and they double down and lie some more. >> this is the thing, carlos. you heard what the former president said, and in your piece, you talk about shame and the role that plays with people, and, but more importantly, you also talk about, you said that we are no more post racial than we are post truth than we were under obama. that is the quote up there. and talk to me about that, and tell me what you mean by that? >> well, at the outset of the obama president si, there wcy t a lot of optimism with striking a blow to racial, and being post racial is a myth. america is quite racial as it turns out. i do think that, you know, speaking of the death of truth or being post truth maybe premature and not to undercut the seriousness of what is going on, and the truth, and fact-based information is vital in many other arenas in life, and in politics is where it is really being degraded. >> yes. >> and kirsten, a short time here, and what does it say about us, meaning all of us, as americans, that someone who can appeal to the lowest common denominator can have, can become the president of the united states? >> i don't think it says anything writ large about the united states. i do think it says something about people who are tribal and want to believe whatever the leader they support says, but i don't know if it is an indictment of the entire country, and i would say that i am a little bit more al r larmed than carlos is. i think that the fact that it is happening in politics is probably pretty critical, because this is where we shape the policies and how somebody like donald trump gets re-elected if this continues. so i think that i do think that it is important to be outrage and concerned, and if people are looking for the practical thingses to do, look for the first thing that authoritarian leaders do is to go after the media media. >> and it is important the vote and not just get upset. >> yes. vote. >> thank you, douglas, kirsten and carlos. we will be right back. the day after chemo shouldn't mean going back to the doctor just for a shot. with neulasta onpro patients get their day back to be with family, or just to sleep in. strong chemo can put you at risk of serious infection. in a key study neulasta reduced the risk of infection from 17% to 1%, a 94% decrease. neulasta onpro is designed to deliver neulasta the day after chemo and is used by most patients today. neulasta is for certain cancer patients receiving strong chemotherapy. do not take neulasta if you're allergic to it or neupogen (filgrastim). an incomplete dose could increase infection risk. ruptured spleen, sometimes fatal as well as serious lung problems allergic reactions, kidney injuries and capillary leak syndrome have occurred. report abdominal or shoulder tip pain, trouble breathing or allergic reactions to your doctor right away. in patients with sickle cell disorders, serious, sometimes fatal crises can occur. the most common side effect is bone and muscle ache. ask your doctor about neulasta onpro. pay no more than $25 per dose with copay card. we have one to two fires a day and when you respond together and you put your lives on the line, you do have to surround yourself with experts. and for us the expert in gas and electric is pg&e. we run about 2,500/2,800 fire calls a year and on almost every one of those calls pg&e is responding to that call as well. and so when we show up to a fire and pg&e shows up with us it makes a tremendous team during a moment of crisis. i rely on them, the firefighters in this department rely on them, and so we have to practice safety everyday. utilizing pg&e's talent and expertise in that area trains our firefighters on the gas or electric aspect of a fire and when we have an emergency situation we are going to be much more skilled and prepared to mitigate that emergency for all concerned. the things we do every single day that puts ourselves in harm's way, and to have a partner that is so skilled at what they do is indispensable, and i couldn't ask for a better partner. a book that you're ready to share with the world? 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