INSKEEP: Has something changed in the way the paper covers and writes about Trump?
BAQUET: Yes, the simple answer is yes. Politicians often exaggerate their records, obfuscate, say they did something great when it wasn't so great. I think in the last few weeks, he's sort of crossed a little bit of a line where he's actually said things — I think the moment for me was the birther story, where he has repeated for years his belief that President Obama was not born in the United States. That's not an obfuscation; that's not an exaggeration. I think that was just demonstrably a lie, and I think that "lie" is not a word that newspapers use comfortably.
INSKEEP: Sure, and let's talk about why that is. When I think about the word "lie," it seems to me different than even saying something is false or wrong because when you say "lie," you are suggesting you know the person intentially told an untruth. You feel you know their mind.
BAQUET: And I think that was the case with birther[ism]. I think to say that that was a "falsehood" wouldn't have captured the duration of his claim, to be frank, the outrageousness of his claim. I think to have called it just a falsehood would have put it in the category of the usual political fare, where politicians say, "My tax plan will save a billion dollars," but it's actually a half a billion and they're using the wrong analysis. This was something else. And I think we owed it to our readers to just call it out for what it was.
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