By Rabbi Yair Hoffman for 5tjt.com

Politico is a news organization that is only 15 years old, and recently sold for one billion dollars.  They were apparently lied to, this week, by the White House in a response given to one of their reporters.

The Sfas Tamim Foundation, an organization dedicated to the promotion of the value of honesty, pointed out the incident and explained that the White House was a poor role model for the nation in regard to this week’s incident.

WHAT HAPPENED

This past Wednesday, the news broke that White House communications director, Kate Bedingfield, was stepping down from her position.  The story was broken by the Wall Street Journal on Wednesday at 3:11 PM.

But Alex Thompson, a British reporter for Politico, criticized the White House in a Twitter tweet later that day.  Apparently, he had called the White House 18 minutes earlier and inquired about the news, telling the White House that was going to run with it.

“I called the White House at 2:53pm to ask for comment and told them we were running it. They asked for more time to check with folks. I gave it to them. WSJ pubbed at 3:11pm with a statement from Klain,” Thompson tweeted. [EDITOR’S NOTE: pubbed is short for published]

Thompson suggested that the White House gave him the runaround to avoid giving him the story.  They had preferred to give it to the Wall Street Journal first.

In a later tweet, Thompson added, “good luck to the White House staffer who gets a 2 minute long deadline next time.”

In this particular case, the behavior and the reaction to it was a consequence discussed by Chazal.  “Of course, we do not need the White House and the reactions to what they do to prove Chazal correct,” remarked Rabbi Boruch Delman, director of the Sfas Tamim Foundation, “but it is important to point it out whenever it happens.”

WHAT RAV CHAIM ZT”L WRITES

Rav Chaim Kanievsky zt”l writes in his Orchos Yosher commentary on the trait of Emes – Truth:

“One who is habitually lies is considered to be lowly and is disrespected, and people do not believe anything that he says.”

Rav Chaim zt”l was clearly referring to the Gemorah in Sanhedrin 89b which states, “this is the punishment of a liar – even when he tells the truth, they do not listen to them.”

THE THOMPSON TWEET

In his later aforementioned tweet, where Thompson is now only giving them a “two-minute heads up”, he is clearly saying that he will never believe them again.

Aside from publishing a weekly Parsha sheet on Emes, the Sfas Tamim Foundation also publishes translations of classic works on the Torah value of honesty and integrity.  Stay tuned for works that will become available in the coming weeks and months.

FULL DISCLOSURE:  The author writes a weekly parsha sheet for the Sfas Tamim Foundation.

To subscribe to the weekly parsha sheet, please send an email to the author at [email protected]

This week’s newsletter is found below

STF newsletter – Vol 2 – Iss 10 – 07_09_2022