In a piece absurdly titled "Why 'Fact Checking' and 'Reality Check' Do Not Apply to Trump", NPR tries to convince you of something that isn't true: that Trump isn't lying, he's telling you what he believes to be true.

The president may not even tell "lies" in the sense that the rest of us might.

If we lie and are exposed, we face consequences that affect us personally. It is different for this president.

Why is it different? Because the very idea of error or deception requires a shared sense of what is actually correct or truthful. The key word here is shared, and that is what seems to be lacking.

Our current president makes a practice of describing things not as they are but as he wants them to be — or at least as he wants them to be perceived. He puts his idealized version forward constantly, not as a vision for the future but as a view of the present.

Aaaaahhhhhhhh!

Making statements with intent to convince people to see things as they are not is lying.

Presenting an "idealized version" of the present, when the actual present is obvious to anyone who cares to look, is lying.

He intentionally, knowingly, says things that are not true to mislead or confuse or flummox people when reality is inconvenient for him - which, because he's a piece of flaming garbage, it often is. He's a fucking crooked real-estate developer, a mail-order scammer, a guy who pretended to be someone else in order to push positive news articles about himself, a guy who pays women to stay quiet about affairs, a guy who lies almost every time he opens his mouth.

But NPR wants you to believe he's just using the power of positive thinking to help him achieve his goals. But they're lying.

Nobody knows why they're lying. But they're lying.