Exclusive: Not all heroes wear capes – some wear decades-old Orlando Sentinel ID badges

The man who spoke for most of America yesterday, this man, has a name you might not have heard as the video made the rounds: S.V. (Shirish) Dáte.
He currently works at Huffington Post, but once upon a time, he was a reporter at the Orlando Sentinel. His HuffPost bio lists “the Associated Press, the Palm Beach Post, National Journal and NPR,” but he did indeed work at the Sentinel from 1988-96. In fact, our own Steve Schneider interviewed him in November 2001 about his just-published fourth novel, Deep Water. Schneider said then that his fictional version of the Sentinel is an “insipidly written, high-gloss shill sheet that … rewards big-bucks advertisers like [Disney] with glowing puff pieces, not probing exposés.” Clearly the man has a habit of expressing strong opinions out loud.

In this case, Dáte was saying out loud what we all know: that Trump has made more than 20,000 “false or misleading claims” (that is, told 20K lies) over the course of his presidency.

Let’s revisit that delicious set of sentences, shall we?

“Mr. President, after three and a half years, do you regret at all all the lying you’ve done to the American people?”

Trump: “All the what?”

“All of the lying. All the dishonesties.”

Trump: “That who has done?”

“That YOU have done. Tens of thousands.” 

Ahhhh. Embroider that shit on a sampler. Or failing that level of DIY skill, buy all his books. The man’s an American hero.

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This article appears in Aug 12-18, 2020.