Lipton Exposes The Truth About Trump

On March 27, 2017, NY Times Washington Correspondent Eric Lipton was the keynote speaker at Central Connecticut State University, discussing the topic on what he calls, “Covering Trump and Truth.”

This two time Pulitzer prize winner for investigative journalism has been long time involved in the field, with a published book titled “City of the Sky,” based off his own journalistic findings of 9/11.

Before working at The New York Times, Lipton was a previous reporter for both “The Washington Post” and “The Hartford Courant” here in Connecticut. However, although Lipton has been reporting since 1987, he confessed to fellow students and faculty of the journalism program here at CCSU, that he has “never covered anything like the Trump administration before.”

From covering Trump since the beginning stages of his presidential campaign, Lipton and other journalists have been monitoring Trump weekend by weekend. To a crowd of no more than 50 people, Lipton began to speak out in regards to his own experiences on reporting the significant untruths by the Trump administration, specifically in regards to President Donald Trump’s golf empire raising questions in the media.

Lipton made note of the recent hiccups on Trump’s whereabouts, describing how what was written in his schedule did not match up with the actual truth, something as a journalist he could not ignore.

“It is simply games that he is playing with us [reporters]. Are you playing golf, or aren’t you?” Lipton gave the crowd an explanation on how, while the President was supposed to participate in meetings, instead fled to his self-owned golf club and restaurant in Virginia.

“Why would he be in golf shoes if he's in a meeting with his Cabinet about Russia?” Lipton later added.

Himself and the rest of his team of reporters went as far as sending a journalist to the same restaurant as the President, simply to emphasize on finding the truth for the American people highly important.

“We take what they [Trump administration] tell us, then we have to disprove it.” Lipton made it prominent in his speech that as journalists, it’s vital to debunk the information the administration is feeding us, and that “we cannot take the value of their words because they are most likely misleading you.”

Despite the exhaustion and constant dedication involved in continuously fact-checking and investigating the Trump administration, Eric Lipton expressed immensely how “it’s a great time to be a journalist,” and that Trumps assaults on the NY Times are only energizing him to be a better investigative journalist.